Here are this year’s Confused.com Plain English Campaign Awards. As part of our 40th Anniversary celebrations and to mark our new sponsorship we’ve added some new categories. Even so, the old favourites are still present and correct.

Confused.com considers 2019 ‘the year of confusion’ and we can hardly disagree. Many gamely helped to make sense of an often baffling year, but some could only manage to contribute to the general bafflement.

As usual, we’ve gathered together all our plain English heroes and villains from the last twelve months. There were political writers somehow making sense of Brexit, and politicians who made it increasingly difficult for said journalists with deceptive and confusing slogans (and outright lies). There were aghast campaigners tired of feckless public servants, and a prodigiously-dishonest and typically gaffe-prone Prime Minister (who once, we should remind you, won our acclaim for plain speaking). And while there were lone activists who somehow managed to spread a very simple, inspiring and positive message worldwide, there was also a diametrically-opposed ‘moron’ President causing worldwide anxiety with garbled tweets and general provocation. 2019 literally had everything, and we’re hoping 2020 might be a little less chaotic.