News from the Center for Plain Language
Read today’s press release from the Center for Plain language about report cards for federal agencies one year after the Plain Writing Act regulations went into effect.
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Judge Wilken tells NCAA attorney to “use actual, meaningful words”
U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken is running the antitrust trial against the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) on behalf of Ed O’Bannon. The Wall Street Journal reports the judge is not knowledgeable about sports. ESPN’s W site (devoted to women and sports) says she has been direct, civil and understated during the trial, which ended last Friday, and that,…
Help your readers see what you mean with informative graphics
As Forbes.com contributor Naomi Robbins says, Despite the fact that graphs are now ubiquitous in virtually every field of business, very few people have received any training on how to read or design a graph. Naomi ran a graph makeover contest in which she explains why the bar graph shown here is a much better choice than the original…
Who deserves to be called a pro?
This post follows up on some conversation about the meaning of “specialist” after my On Being a Writing Specialist a few days ago. I had always used “specialist” and “pro” and “expert” interchangeably. That will change now that I’ve done some more reading and reflecting. I knew I would have to define what I mean by “pro”…
The sorry state of language education
Please tell me you had a teacher talk about homophones at least once during your educational experience. This story from the Salt Lake Tribune a few days ago depresses me on many levels. In short, an English language teacher was fired for using the word, “homophonic.” Like I’m watching a car crash . . . I haven’t been…
Plain language requires attention to the audience
In Part One of my attempt to explain how I understand plain language, I focused on the elements of a text that must be managed to create a plain language document. Anyone who has known me for long, however, could have predicted that I would talk about the rhetorical context of a high quality document in Part Two. …
