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Editorial
Will plain language help us understand government?
Thursday, May 19, 2011
We remember the advice of a seventh-grade science teacher. Instead of "I heated up the beaker on the bunsen burner," we were supposed to write "the beaker was heated on the bunsen burner." Nice and passive, and boring verbiage for our lab report.
Journalism school reversed all that; back to active, subject-verb-object sentences written to an eighth-grade level. We were often at odds with English professors who preferred more flowerly language.
Working journalists constantly fight the temptation to pass along verbatim government jargon that seems designed to intimidate or distract if not outright confuse.
Last fall, President Obama signed the Plain Writing Act, which will take full effect in October, requiring federal agencies to start writing plainly in all new or substantially revised documents produced for the public.
It's about time.
As the Associated Press described it, "pursuant to regulations promulgated thereunder and commencing in accordance with a statute signed herein by President Barack Obama, the government shall be precluded from writing the pompous gibberish heretofore evidenced, to the extent practicable."
That sentence contained 11 terms that won't be allowed under the new system.
The changes have roots back in the Clinton administration, when Vice President Al Gore's "reinventing government" effort enlisted Annetta Cheek, now chairwoman of the Center for Plain Language and one of the authors of the government's new guidelines.
Bureaucratic writing tends to be vague and officious because federal employees tend to write with their bosses and agency lawyers in mind, not the public, she said.
It's just like that seventh grader, writing for the teacher rather than his peers.
We have used grammar-checking word-processing software which "grades" our writing according its complexity; there's probably some available for government writers that includes a "BS-o-meter."
The Plain Writing Act may have effects far beyond what even its authors have expected.
Who knows, once the act is fully implemented, maybe we citizens will actually be able to tell what the government is doing.