Who reads this stuff? Almost nobody. And as this news clip from a CBS affiliate in Alabama reveals, that costs the average household about $3,000 a year.

Lawyers argue that excessive language is necessary to “protect consumers.”  But until disclosures are presented in a form people actually read, they’re doing just the opposite: allowing organizations to bury unattractive terms in pages of jargon, while simultaneously shielding them from legal liability.

“Devil in the Details” by Shanisty Myers

Listen to Ralph Nader.

So many people in the plain-language world play dual roles of practitioner and advocate. And that takes a fair bit of energy. Most of us

• either provide plain-language services — document writing and rewriting, training, editing, etc — or work in an academic institution; and
• actively promote plain language in an attempt to “change the world”.

In our practitioner role, we so often have to deal with people who oppose what we’re trying to achieve. Maybe they are a doubter on a training course. Maybe they think plain language is a wonderful thing; it’s just that, in the document they are being asked to sign-off, they are particularly concerned about some of the language used, the style of headings, and the use of graphics.

When we deal with these doubters, we step-up and advocate: burning the precious energy that drives us.

When discussing a plain-language conference with the fellow practitioners and advocates I meet, we always emphasise that the beauty of being there is

• gaining new stories and insights to use in our practising and advocating; and
• refreshing our plain-language energy.

Being at Clarity2012 will, surely, affirm our shared belief that plain language helps make things easier for readers everywhere, and helps makes organisations of every kind more efficient and more effective. And that affirmation will lift our energy.

Do come along. The conference program has a terrific line up of speakers. Be enthused, informed, and inspired.  Bring some of your colleagues, friends, clients, customers, and advisers to Clarity 2012.

Christopher Balmford

Here’s a link to the tentative conference schedule. Speakers from around the world will update you on current legal language research, legislation that promotes plain language, the US Plain Writing Act, and much more.

https://sites.google.com/site/claritydc2012/program

Once you’re on the program page, you can access registration. Join us at the National Press Club for two days with other plain language advocates and practitioners.

Did I mention how beautiful Washington, D.C. is in the spring?

Go to the program page, register, join us. You’ll be glad you did.

“Federal agencies must report their progress this week in complying with the Plain Writing Act, a new decree that government officials communicate more conversationally with the public.

Speaking plainly, they ain’t there yet.

Which leaves, in the eyes of some, a basic and critical flaw in how the country runs. “Government is all about telling people what to do,” said Annetta Cheek, a retired federal worker from Falls Church and longtime evangelist for plain writing. “If you don’t write clearly, they’re not going to do it.”

But advocates such as Cheek estimate that federal officials have translated just 10 percent of their forms, letters, directives and other documents into “clear Government communication that the public can understand and use,” as the law requires.”

Read the full article in the Washington Post.

In this short, playful video Terin Izil explains why simple, punchy language is often the clearest way to convey a message. This video is from TEDEducation, launching a series on Playing with Language. Watch on YouTube.

These same reasons are certain to resurface. Let’s examine them:

Criticism 1–A law requiring regulations to be written in plain language would be used to slow down or derail the regulatory process by those who oppose government’s role in regulating.

Currently, many poorly written regulations languish on policymakers’ desks awaiting an explanation. Then they are further delayed at the Office of Management and Budget while OMB examiners ask for explanations or clarification from the agency.

So rather than delaying regulations, the Plain Regulations Act will probably speed up the regulatory process because plain-language regulations are easier to review. Since the structure and language are clearer, it’s easier to tell that the underlying reasoning is sound and that the regulation is both complete and accurate. The same characteristics that make a plain-language regulation easier for the regulated community to read and comprehend make it easier for the reviewers as well.

Besides, someone intent on delaying a regulation has many more powerful tools to use, such as demanding additional analyses under the Paperwork Reduction Act, Executive Order 12866, and the Regulatory Flexibility Act. Demands for additional economic analysis under one of these authorities are a much more effective delaying tactic.

And if regulations are delayed for lack of clarity, the remedy will be straightforward, unlike in cases of delay for one of these other reasons. Remedying the plain language will take much less time than performing additional economic analyses and will result in a superior product that causes fewer problems for everyone.

Criticism 2– It’s impossible to measure compliance with the plain-language requirement. Measurement will further tie up the regulatory process.

There are three simple ways to check a regulation for clarity:

1.  use software to spot obvious flaws,

2.  use a checklist to catch problems with organization and flow, and

3.  have a colleague review the edited product.

Readily available software that’s part of most word-processing programs, or more sophisticated free-standing programs such as Stylewriter or Visible Thread, will identify fundamental problems like sentence length and passive voice. The Federal Plain Language Guidelines[1] or other document checklists[2] are handy tools for reviewing other issues. And a final review by a fresh pair of eyes should already be part of writing any rule.

The gold standard for testing a document’s clarity is to test the draft with a sample of the public affected by the regulations. While that won’t usually be possible with regulations, comments from the regulations.gov website will serve as a good substitute. Giving the public the right to demand clarity in rulemaking documents should result in more plain-language comments on draft regulations. And with the ready availability of simple and cheap on-line surveying software such as Survey Monkey, it is possible to conduct some simple tests of regulatory language.

Finally, long-term public reaction to the regulation will show whether it communicates clearly. Does the agency get fewer questions about the regulations? Is the compliance rate higher? Are required forms filled out more completely and correctly? In the 1980s, when the FCC wrote the first plain-language regulation (on citizens’ band radios), the number of calls to the agency declined significantly. The agency moved all five staff members who had been answering public questions to other jobs.

Criticism 3–Plain language is imprecise.

Much of what plain language proposes has nothing to do with precision. “In the event of default on the part of the buyer” is no more precise than “if the buyer defaults.” Long, complicated sentences crammed with clauses and conditions don’t make a complicated idea clearer. Proponents have demonstrated time and again that the verbose, convoluted traditional style of legal writing is unnecessary. You can see many examples on the plainlanguage.gov website.[3]

While there are no simple alternatives for terms like “good cause” and “reasonable doubt,” terms of art are a tiny part of any legal document—less than 3 percent in one study.[4] The rest can be written in plain language, and even technical terms can often be translated into plain language with just a few extra words.

If anything, as legal-writing expert Joseph Kimble points out, plain language is more precise than old-style legalese because it lays bare all the confusion and uncertainty that legalese tends to hide.[5] Anyone who has had experience writing in plain language knows that to be true.

Criticism 4–It’s too hard to write regulations in plain language.

We hear this complaint from executive branch attorneys who have spent their careers writing in the traditional federal bureaucratic style.

It is hard to write in plain language, without question. Explaining complex legal and technical provisions clearly is a challenge—whether it’s in the traditional cumbersome style or in plain language. But since several plain-language regulations have already been codified,[6] clearly at least some federal attorneys can cope with the challenge.

What’s more, while writing plainly may be hard work, it’s not as hard as deciphering unclear language. Spending time at the drafting stage to ensure that regulations are clear saves more people more time and money and helps avoid litigation over the meaning of a regulation. So it’s likely that the up-front costs of writing in plain language will be repaid many times over by the savings, not only to the regulated community but also to the agencies themselves. In a forthcoming book, Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please: The Case for Plain Language in Business, Government, and Law, Professor Kimble summarizes 52 studies demonstrating the extraordinary benefits—including time and money saved—from communicating in plain language. Everybody wins.

Finally, there is a simple moral imperative: citizens have a right to be able to understand the regulations that govern their lives. And the government has a corresponding duty to write those regulations in plain language.

Guest Blog by Annetta Cheek and Joe Kimble: to be published in the Michigan Bar Journal, Summer 2012

[2] http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/quickreference/checklist.cfm

[3] http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before_after/index.cfm. See also Joseph Kimble, Lessons in Drafting from the New Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 12 Scribes Journal of Legal Writing 25 (2008-2009).

[4] Joseph Kimble, Answering the Critics of Plain Language, http://www.plainlanguagenetwork.org/kimble/critics.htm, Footnote 14 (citing articles in The Michigan Bar Journal and The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing).

[5] Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please, http.plalinlangugenetwork.org/kimble/dollars.htm, page 2.

[6] http://www.plainlanguage.gov/usingPL/government/regstable.cfm

Fine print: The devil is in the details. Agreements are getting longer – to comply with law

Broadcast March 9, 2012

“Why are agreements and contracts getting longer?

One reason: The same reason some coffee shop chains put CAUTION: VERY HOT on their foam coffee cups.

Companies are saying they’re required, by law, to include more and more information each day. Things like privacy policies. Warnings for a phone, gadget, or appliance on how you should and shouldn’t use it.

…

Because of this, the Center for Plain Language is calling on government agencies and businesses to make agreements understandable and readable. Each year it puts out a list of the most confusing documents out there, from health insurance forms to software agreements and car seat installations.
“Nobody’s going to read that and understand it without spending days or weeks trying to decipher it,” said the Center’s Henry Maury. 

A company called Transparency Labs has done a study, and found less than 1 in 10,000 Americans actually reads the fine print, and it costs the average household up to $3,000 a year in fees and charges.”

By Bill Tomison with Susan Hogan

http://cciio.cms.gov/resources/files/Files2/02102012/blank-sbc-template-finalpdf.pdf

Testing by Consumers’ Union showed that consumers could use the standardized health information, but the two scenarios about having a baby and treating Type 2 diabetes gave them a better sense of what was covered and the value of health insurance. These scenarios, formatted much like the Nutrition Facts label with plain language a key component, show consumers what proportion of the cost of care a health insurance policy or plan would cover and will help consumers compare across health plans they are considering. One test participant talked about the scenarios as “putting furniture in an empty house” so she could see how she would “live” in the policy.

“All consumers, for the first time, will really be able to clearly comprehend the sometimes confusing language insurance plans often use in marketing,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.  “This will give them a new edge in deciding which plan will best suit their needs and those of their families or employees.”

The new explanations, which will be available beginning, or soon after, September 23, 2012, will be a critical resource for the roughly 150 million Americans with private health insurance today.

Stakeholders as the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) and a working group composed of health insurance-related consumer advocacy organizations, health insurers, health care professionals, patient advocates including those representing people with limited English proficiency, and others helped to develop the Summary and scenarios. The Center for Plain Language wrote a letter to OMB to support the approval of this important plain language document.

Let us know how you like the Summary!

For example, instead of saying “10-46,” police will now say “disabled vehicle.”

In addition to confusion over the codes themselves, not all police departments used the code to signal the same problems. That means conversations among police departments was particularly difficult during emergencies.

According to a recent article in GazetteNews.com (Maryland Community News Online) written by Jeremy Arias,

Under the former system, several significant misunderstandings used to take place between Montgomery officers and state troopers, Felsen said.

“To them a ‘10-50’ was a routine traffic incident, but in the Montgomery County system prior to 2006, ‘10-50’ was an ‘officer in trouble’ call,” he said. “So we had actual cases where people were on the radio and the wrong message was being used.”

The code problem exists not only within police departments but between fire and police departments. This inconsistency was particularly evident during Sept. 11, 2001, when police and fire agencies from across the nation rushed to help.

“When they got there, many of them were unable to communicate with each other effectively,” said Chris Essid, director of the Office of Emergency Communications for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

According to an article by Sharon Kiley Mack (January 1, 2010) in the Bangor Daily News, nineteen states planned to eliminate the codes in favor of plain language.

Below are the current codes from APCO, an international organization of public safety communications professionals.

We say:  10-15.  Message Delivered.