News
Plain English campaign news articles
Hurricane of misinformation
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- Created on Friday, 08 September 2017 15:58
Right-wing media representatives in the US have been rightly criticised for peddling dangerous misinformation about Hurricane Irma.
“There is a desire to advance this climate change agenda,” suggested Rush Limbaugh. “And hurricanes are one of the fastest and best ways to do it.”
Summer 2017 issue of Plain English magazine
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- Created on Friday, 18 August 2017 10:14
Summer 2017 issue of Plain English magazine now published and available for download.
Issue 87
(Summer 2017)
(Summer 2017)
Yet more obvious jargon
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- Created on Friday, 28 July 2017 15:58
Every so often we see a list of ‘most hated jargon terms’ and job website Glassdoor have provided the latest. There are many (sadly) familiar terms on there. ‘Touch base’, ‘Blue-sky thinking’, and ‘Thought shower’, to name three, continue to thrive among office dullards.
Why are these awful terms so enduring? We think there are two main reasons.
To be clear, or not to be...
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- Created on Thursday, 23 March 2017 14:31
We regularly bang on about lengthy terms and conditions, in the hope that they’ll eventually disappear. But instead, they seem to be getting longer and more and more absurd.
Amazon is the latest culprit. Their Kindle terms and conditions are 73,198 words long. Were you to want to read them, it would take you about 9 hours – but why would you, or anyone, bother?
Legal rulings judged 'overlong'
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- Created on Thursday, 09 February 2017 15:18
For many years we’ve struggled to influence the language of the courts. Legal language is still very much how it’s always been – largely archaic, Latin-heavy and pretty much impenetrable to non-experts.
There’s never been a justifiable excuse for this – just as there’s absolutely no reason why barristers and solicitors don’t use plain English rather than language very few can understand. But perhaps changes are finally afoot.
