Past newsletters 2004

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Plain English update 25 June 2004

A few weeks ago we reported on a survey by the firm Today Translations (www.todaytranslations.com) revealing the ten legal expressions which were most difficult to translate. This week they produced two similar lists covering general words in English and other languages.

The most difficult non-English word to translate is apparently ilunga, a word from Tshiluba, a language spoken by the Bantu tribe of the southeastern Congo. It means 'a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time; to tolerate it a second time; but never a third time.'

The most difficult word for translating from English is reported as plenipotentiary: 'a special ambassador or envoy, invested with full powers'.

And ironically for us gobbledygook came second in the list. We were quite surprised to see this, as we have seen equivalents in at least four languages, including French (charabia), German (kauderwelsh), Dutch (onzin) and Italian (gergo incomprensible). We'd love to hear any translations of the word into other languages.

Japanese lawyers have joined the drive for clearer language. The Nichibenren (Japanese Federation of Bar Associations) is trying to eliminate archaic and obscure Japanese terms from legal discussion. The drive comes as Japan prepares to begin using the jury system in 2009.

Clearer allergy information on food labels in the United States came a step closer this week as the Congress Energy and Commerce Committee approved plans for a new law. Congresswoman Nita M Lowey first proposed the Food Allergen Labelling and Consumer Protection Act in 2001. The plans have already passed scrutiny by the Senate, and will now go to a vote by all members of Congress. If they approve the bill, it will only require the signature of President Bush to become law.

Among the proposed rules is a requirement that a food label must say if a food contains milk, egg, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy, or wheat. The label must use the English names, not Latin equivalents. The rules also include guidelines to make sure the term 'gluten-free' is used more consistently.

A couple of readers have asked for further details of the United States case we mentioned last week where french fries were legally classified as fresh vegetables. The relevant law was the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act, originally passed in 1930 (though the Department of Agriculture, which enforces the law, ruled last year that it covered battered potatoes). The case we mentioned was an appeal against the classification by Chicago lawyer Tim Elliott, heard by federal district Judge Richard Schell in Beaumont, Texas.

We also missed a particularly unappetising phrase used in the case. A patent document from manufacturer Lamb Weston said that making french fries involves coating potato pieces in an "aqueous starch enrobing slurry".

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Plain English update 18 June 2004

It looks as if staff at the Financial Services Authority (FSA) will be feeling even more pressure to write in plain English. Mail on Sunday financial columnist Tony Hetherington has joined the Financial Services Consumer Panel, an independent committee that speaks for the public and keeps tabs on the FSA's work. As any Mail on Sunday readers will know, the newspaper has never been shy to criticise financial gobbledygook and excessive jargon, whether it's from regulated financial firms or the FSA itself.

We have booked a series of special training events in London for the autumn. The one-day events combine the techniques of plain English writing with advice about a particular type of writing. The dates are as follows.

• Wednesday 22 September: Writing for websites in plain English
• Tuesday 12 October: Report writing
• Tuesday 2 November: Writing medical information in plain English
• Friday 5 November: Plain English in legal agreements
• Tuesday 23 November: Plain English and forms design
• Wednesday 24 November: Advanced grammar

There are discounts available for corporate members of the Campaign, or for anyone booking more than one place. For more details, please phone our training administrator Heidi Tinsley on 01663 744409 or e-mail us (info@plainenglish.co.uk).

We were pleased to hear from the Newcastle-based Nomad Housing Group that they have adopted the principles of plain English to produce a new tenants' handbook. It is specifically aimed at tenants with learning difficulties, meaning the writing and design had to achieve a balance between being accessible but not patronising the reader.

As we continue gathering comments about the recent series of elections, we were intrigued to read one man's account of mistakenly spoiling his ballot for the London mayoral election.

The man said, "There were no instructions on the paper at all... I said my first choice was 'x' and my second was the same guy, so I voted for him twice. But [it turns out] you're not allowed to vote for the same person twice."

And who was this unfortunate voter? It was Jon Snow, the presenter of last year's winner of our 'Best National Television Programme' award, Channel 4 News.

Asked to name a fresh vegetable produced in the United States, many people would think of zucchini (courgette) or eggplant (aubergine). But according to a Department of Agriculture ruling, the category also includes french fries.

The case involves a law designed to protect producers of "perishable agricultural commodities". Government lawyers said that it was wrong to claim that batter-coated french fries were "processed products", and argued that "they have not been 'processed' to the point that they are no longer fresh. It is still considered 'fresh' because it is not preserved. It retains its perishable quality".

The judge agreed with the government case, but said the term "fresh vegetables" (used in the law) was ambiguous.

The definition differs from that in Britain, where the Government's scheme to encourage people to eat five servings of fruit and vegetables each day specifically excludes potatoes (fresh or otherwise).

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Plain English update 11 June 2004

Christmas came early for Plain English Campaign this week. Not only did the Department of Trade and Industry outlaw gobbledygook in adverts for credit and hire agreements, but they did it in a refreshingly clear fashion.

The relevant section of the Consumer Credit (Advertisements) Regulations 2004 simply says:

"Every credit advertisement or hire advertisement shall:

(1) use plain and intelligible language;

(2) be easily legible (or, in the case of any information given orally, clearly audible) and

(3) specify the name of the advertiser.

The change is part of a series of regulations aimed at tightening up the credit laws, including the following measures.

All firms must use the same method of calculating the Annual Percentage Rate (APR), allowing a true and fair comparison.

The APR must now be the most prominent financial information in an advert.

Any products or services other than the loan itself (such as payment protection plans) must have a separate signature box. This will stop people signing up to these extra services without realising they are 'bundled' with the loan.

Austria is the latest country to promote plain language. Six departments of the country's government have launched a campaign titled 'Vienna Speaks Plainly'.

Businessman Roland Machek told the Associated Press that unclear language was very common among public officials. "They use very old-fashioned words that our grandfathers used - and often very specific terms that you don't normally use in everyday life," he said. "It's been a tradition in Austria since the emperor's time. They loved to create an exclusive fraternity that shut out everyone else. It's ridiculous, and it has to be changed."

The campaign has involved asking 100 citizens to make suggestions for improving a set of standard letters and forms. There is also a telephone line for making complaints against excessive legalese.

The campaign has even created a new word for the process of clarifying documents: Verwaltungsvereinfachungsmassnahmen. (It's not as much of a mouthful as it seems. It simply means 'simplified administrative procedures'.

When an organisation describes itself as "the public private strategic partnership for sub-regional economic development and regeneration for the Humber", it's perhaps inevitable that it deals with a lot of jargon. So we should congratulate the Humber Forum for producing a comprehensive glossary to employment and labour market terms. 'Never Mind The Babble' is available to download free of charge at http://www.humberforum.co.uk/newsstory.asp?id=177

The glossary includes terms such as:

• Coterminous areas: Have a boundary that marks the edge of more than one area for example, the southern boundary of Kirton Lindsey Parish is also part of the boundary of North Lincolnshire Unitary Authority, the Humber sub-region and the Yorkshire and Humber Region;
• SRB: Single Regeneration Budget. A series of programmes, funded by central Government, and now drawing to a close, aimed at regenerating some of the most deprived parts of the country; and
• SWOT Analysis: The analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats associated with a particular topic, issue or opportunity.

Thank you to everyone who has sent in comments about the various elections this week. As well as the points raised last week, several people have commented on the need for clearer explanations of the 'closed party list' system in the European Parliamentary elections in England, Scotland and Wales. (This is a system where the votes decide how many seats each party earns in a region, but the parties themselves decide which candidates take up those seats.)

We have a clarification to last week's notes on the election for the London Assembly. We wrote that the names of the local candidates and the parties competing for 'London-wide' seats were written in "the same style". We should have said that they were written in the same size and font; however the local candidate names were in block capitals and the party names were in lower case.

Once again, a letter in the Times caught our eye this week. It's from Geoff Foster of Welwyn, Hertfordshire.

"Mr Roger Craig (letter, May 29) mentions the 156-page user manual for his new digital camera. Yesterday, my father, prompted by the focus on D-Day, browsed through his wartime memorabilia. These included the aircraft manual issued to him when appointed in 1943 as skipper of a Sunderland flying boat, a heavily armed, four-engine aircraft with a crew of twelve. The manual had 50 pages."

Plain English update 4 June 2004

Ballot papers and voting packs have been in the news this week and several of your have contacted us with complaints and concerns. While many of the problems have been related to administration, there have been several problems with clarity.

Most postal voters have received a single sheet containing three or four individual documents (a European election ballot, a declaration of identity form, guidance notes, and in some cases a local authority election ballot). While none of these documents is particularly unclear, the combination of several documents on one sheet has caused confusion. A particular problem has been those sheets with ballots for European and local elections; the two use different voting systems and would arguably work better if distributed as physically separate documents. According to reports, such problems are why the Electoral Commission suggested restricting the postal ballot experiment to those areas with only one election.

As well as these single sheets, many voters have received guidance documents produced by their local authority. The depth and clarity of this information varies from authority to authority, particularly in terms of the explanation about getting a witness for the declaration of identity. (For example, many voters have been uncertain whether a family member is allowed to witness the declaration.) There is also an argument that, to be truly democratic, all voters in a particular European election area should be getting the same level of official guidance.

There are also problems with the ballot papers for the London Assembly. This involves two separate votes: one for a local constituency member, and one for a political party to get seats that aren't specific to a constituency. The two votes appear on a single ballot paper in adjacent columns. So, the left-hand column contains a list of candidate names in alphabetical order (with the party listed below the name in smaller type). And the right-hand column contains a list of political parties in alphabetical order, written in the same style as the candidate names. This means it is very possible that voters will mistakenly read across the ballot paper and think the candidate and the party are linked. To show the potential for confusion, Ealing and Hillingdon independent candidate Dalawar Majid Chaudhry's name will apparently be listed next to that of the British National Party.

The Electoral Commission have appealed for comments on voters' experiences with these elections. If you would like to make any comments through Plain English Campaign, please send us your thoughts or conclusions.

We have previously reported that the Financial Services Authority were planning to tighten the rules on reference to past performance in financial advertising. The changes took effect this week and include the following.

• If there is any mention of past performance, the advert must include a standardised table showing annual returns (as a percentage) for the past five years.
• If less than five years' worth of information is available, the advert must include details going back as far as possible. If less than 12 months' worth of information is available, the advert cannot refer to past performance.
• Firms cannot make past performance the most prominent feature of their advert.
• A warning that past performance doesn't guarantee future results must appear as part of the main body of the advert rather than being buried in the small print.

The following letter appeared in The Times this week.

"It says on the pack of coffee I have just bought: 'Produce of Central America, Colombia and Tanzania. Packed in Belgium.' What puzzles me is why this product is called 'Italian Blend'.'

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