Since 1979, the Plain English Campaign [see note 1] has
been
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“…
campaigning against gobbledygook, jargon and misleading public information”
|
This
is not new. In 1906, H.W. and F.G. Fowler [see note 2]
suggested that
|
"Anyone
who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself
to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief,
vigorous and
lucid."
|
Their recommendations for writing (in what would later be called 'plain English') were:
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Prefer the familiar word to
the far fetched.
Prefer the concrete word to
the abstract.
Prefer the single word to
the circumlocution.
Prefer the short word to the
long.
Prefer the Saxon word to the
Romance.
|
In 1946, George
Orwell [see note 3]
produced the following advice:
|
i.
|
Never use a metaphor, simile or other
figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
|
|
ii.
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Never use a long word where a short
one will do.
|
|
iii.
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If it possible to cut a word out,
always cut it out.
|
|
iv.
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Never use the passive where you can
use the active.
|
|
v.
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Never use a foreign phrase, a
scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English
equivalent.
|
|
vi.
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Break any of these rules sooner than say
anything outright barbarous
|
A civil
servant, Sir Ernest Gowers, was invited to produce a guide for improving
‘official’ English. An immediate success, it was published in 1948 as ‘Plain Words: A Guide to the Use
of English‘.
Extended and revised, this has been in print ever since [see note 4].
Gowers’s advice, similar to Orwell’s, was:
|
Use no more words than are necessary
to express your meaning, for if you use more you are likely to obscure it and
tire your reader.
Use familiar words rather than the far
fetched, if they express your meaning equally well; for the familiar are more
likely to be readily understood.
Use words with a precise meaning,
rather than those that are vague, for the precise will obviously serve better
to make your meaning clear.
|
Some people
think that ‘plain English’ stunts creativity and produces sterile results. This
is not automatically so. But there is a
risk that over-simplification can lose meaning just as easily as over-complication can hide it.
When writing a report, the analyst
needs to strike a balance. A report needs to communicate effectively. It does
not need to compete with the great works of poetry or literature.
Note 1
Note 2
The King's English (1906), https://archive.org/details/kingsenglish00fowlrich
Note 3
George Orwell. Politics and the English Language.1946.
Note 4
Gowers, Ernest (1948). Plain Words: A Guide to the Use of English. HMSO
Gowers, Ernest (1951). ABC of Plain Words. HMSO
Gowers, Ernest (1954). The Complete Plain Words. HMSO
Gowers, Ernest, Rebecca Gowers (2014). Plain Words. Particular, (Penguin). ISBN 0141975539.
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