Past newsletters 2003

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Plain English update 25 July 2003

We now have a complete archive of previous Golden Bull winners as part of the awards section on our site.

To mark the launch of the archive, we compiled a list of the top ten types of gobbledygook offenders, based on the number of Golden Bull-winning documents.

1. Government departments and agencies
2. Local authorities
3. Banks and building societies
4. Writers of contract terms and conditions
5. Insurance firms
6. Education organisations
7. Health organisations
8. Financial and investment firms
9. Transport groups
10. Solicitors writing letters to clients

Our spokesman John Lister said the results were surprising. 'We expected the legal profession to be higher on the list. That said, many of the winners have immediately pointed the finger at their legal department!'

'While both central and local government have traditionally done badly in the Golden Bulls, we shouldn't forget the tremendous improvement in clarity from public officials since Plain English Campaign's launch. Government writing will always come under closer scrutiny because it affects everybody's lives. Fortunately the truly awful documents are now the exception rather than the rule.'

'The list of offenders shows how widespread the problem of unclear writing is. When gobbledygook affects the law, money, health, education and transport, it can makes our lives a daily misery.'

We have also updated the site to give previous winners in our other awards categories.

Following last week's story about European Union (EU) proposals to outlaw dubious health claims on labels, the following letter from our founder‑director Chrissie Maher appeared in several newspapers this week.

'The EU's plans for clearer food labelling should get even tougher and force manufacturers to list sugar and salt content. All packaged food or drink products should say how many teaspoons of sugar they include, whether this comes from syrup, glucose or any other source.

'It's also time to end the ludicrous system of listing salt as 'sodium' and assuming people know they need to multiply this by 2.55 to get the true figure (for salt). Every food label needs to say how many grams of salt the product contains, and then remind us that the recommended daily allowance is just six grams.

'Manufacturers have to stop using our health as a marketing ploy. They need to give us the facts so we can decide for ourselves what is the 'healthy option'.'

The European Union has proposed that 35 local food names should be restricted to products produced in the area. The names include wines such as Chianti, Cognac and Sherry, and cheeses such as Gorgonzola, Roquefort and Stilton.

The EU is asking for the names to become 'geographical indicators', meaning only producers in the local area could use the protected names. The changes will only have a real effect if the World Trade Organisation agrees with the EU proposals.

The Greek government has already protested against the absence of Ouzo from the list, while the British government has asked for Stilton to be removed, arguing that it is rarely sold abroad anyway.

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Plain English update 18 July 2003

The days of touting a food product as '90% fat-free' (put another way, 10% fat) could soon be over. European Commission proposals announced this week aim to end vague or meaningless health claims.

Under the rules, phrases such as 'high-fibre', 'low-fat' or 'sugar-free' will only be allowed if the products meet strict scientific requirements. Announcing the plans, Health and Consumer Affairs Commissioner David Byrne said 'Any information about foods and their nutritional value used in labelling, marketing and advertising which is not clear, accurate and meaningful and cannot be substantiated will not be permitted.'

If the proposals go ahead, they are likely to be adopted into national laws by 2005.

You may remember our recent story about plain English instructions for juries in Ohio. The Californian court system, the largest in the country, has now agreed to similar changes. Judge Carol A Corrigan, chair of the state's Jury Instructions Task Force, said that instructions would not be oversimplified and lose legal effect. 'We never wanted these to be reduced to the art of Beavis and Butthead.' One example of the changes is replacing the phrase:

'Failure of recollection is common. Innocent misrecollection is not uncommon.'

with

'People often forget things or make mistakes in what they remember.'

The changes are the conclusion of a six-year project, and will take effect in civil cases from September. The task force is examining similar changes to criminal case instructions and hopes to approve these by 2005.

A cancer expert says her research 'shows a substantial proportion of the public don't understand terms often used in cancer consultations'. According to Professor Lesley Fallowfield of the Cancer Research UK's group at the University of Sussex, there is 'an urgent need for doctors to reassess the way they explain the diagnosis and treatment of cancer to patients'.

Of the people taking part in the research, nearly half could not explain terms such as 'metastasis' (the cancer is spreading). The study compared how confident people were about their knowledge with how accurate their knowledge truly was. The results showed that doctors 'need to be aware that asking people if they understand what's being said is likely to overestimate comprehension and it may be better to ask what they have understood.'

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Plain English update 11 July 2003

Energy drinks will soon have to carry a warning on the label if they contain high levels of caffeine. A European Union directive says any drink containing more than 150 milligrams of caffeine per litre must have the words 'High caffeine content' on the label. Most popular cola drinks have around 90 to 130 milligrams per litre, but several 'energy' drinks have around 320 milligrams per litre (about the same level as coffee).

The new rules also say manufacturers must specifically list any caffeine (however little) in the ingredients rather than simply writing 'flavouring'.

The Food Standards Agency is consulting on the best ways to bring these rules into British law. The rules do not cover tea or coffee as most consumers understand these contain caffeine.

Speaking of food labelling, Chrissie Maher's column in our next magazine deals with hidden salt and sugar in processed foods. The magazine should be available on our site by next week's update.

It appears consumers around the world are united in their bemusement of computer and technical jargon. A survey of consumers in China, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States found just 3% could correctly define 11 common terms. The survey found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the more confusing somebody found the jargon, the less likely they were to buy a new product, such as a digital camera. The study was organised by the Global Consumer Advisory Board, a group of 14 international business and consumer experts, academics and journalists working to make technology more accessible for the public.

We're always pleased to see organisations follow our advice to test documents on the public. The latest example is the Driving and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), who are producing a new application form for a driving licence. As well as consulting Plain English Campaign and other consumer groups, the Swansea-based DVLA have taken the form into two local schools and asked more than 150 pupils to attempt to fill in the form and give honest feedback on any problems. Because the legal driving age is 17, teenagers are the age group with the most potential users of the new forms.

A communications firm claims politicians effectively speak a different language to the public. The company, Optimum, analysed almost a million words of speech by people across the country, and found 78% of the words used came from 'Old English' (Anglo-Saxon). Most of the rest came from French, Latin or Greek.

However, a sample of Health Secretary John Reid's language found just 62% of the words came from Old English, while the figure dropped to 55% for Government websites.

A copy of the full research is available for £250 from Malcom Galfe at info@optimum-uk.com

There aren't many of us who can say we've never skipped over the small print in a financial document. And some of us have found this to be a mistake. But one man in Australia made a bigger mistake than most.

A court has ordered Jodee Rich, a former director of the failed Australian firm One.Tel, to pay a credit card bill for $333,754 (about £135,000). Mr Rich had claimed he didn't realise he was personally liable for the charges on a company American Express card. He told the court that he couldn't remember reading any terms and conditions on the account.

However, he had twice signed a form to agree to the conditions. American Express pointed out that, had he read the form, he would have seen the plain words 'You are liable for all charges made with the Card'.

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Plain English update 4 July 2003

The Financial Services Authority is continuing to crack down on misleading adverts. Figures just announced for October 2002 to March 2003 show 82 cases where it has forced firms to change or withdraw adverts. In eight cases, the firms had to write to customers to explain that they had not made risks clear enough.

The FSA's consumer director Anna Bradley (previously head of the National Consumer Council) promised 'to ensure that firms do a better job of telling you what you need to know to make an informed decision'.

Financial firm Legal and General have reported that plain English leads to increased customer satisfaction. The firm's latest annual statements for with-profits customers are based on Plain English Campaign guidelines. The statements include an explanation of how with-profits policies work and how the financial markets have affected the value of customers' investments.

It seems this plain English approach has meant customers feel better informed and more confident about their policies. A survey showed that 90% of Legal and General customers are satisfied with their choice of investment.

Martin Waller, the city diarist for the Times, appears to have been in a cynical mood this week. Having received an e-mail offering a product that 'enables users to build stable non-parametric financial time‑series models based on any number of input factors', he replied with a question of his own: 'Does it build unstable parametric financial time‑series models though?'

The answer? 'Characteristically non‑parametric models were previous unstable.'

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