After you’ve taken your costumed little ones out to trick or treat the neighborhood and have put them down to bed, you may want to settle down and relax with a book or surf the web for a while. But the terrors of Halloween are only just beginning – beware the many horrors lurking among those pages!
Sesquepedalia are sneaking across innocent paragraphs everywhere… verbs made hidden skulk furtively from the light… and the passive voice is often found as well! But if you find yourself surrounded by these linguistic ghasts and ghouls – fear not – the Wordbusters at the Center for Plain Language are on the case, mercilessly zapping paranormal prose with our proton packs (well ok – our pens).
So if you should find yourself in need of some word busting, we can help. Handle the emergency by wrangling the rotten reticent writing. Then shove it into the Center for Plain Language’s containment unit here. We will decontaminate the piece in question and dispatch it to the alternate dimension where someone thought it made any freaking sense. Then we will mock it mercilessly when we nominate it for a WonderMark Award in the spring.
And, if you like our word busting work, consider giving the Center for Plain Language a treat here – while you’re at it, bring some friends too. Your support will help keep us in the trick fighting business.
Thanks and Happy Halloween! Sleep well…
Mwah-hahahahahaaaa.
About the author
Bill Ryan is a longtime Federal employee currently serving as a Program Manager in the Department of Homeland Security. He earned his plain language spurs working on the Clinton Administration’s Plain Language Initiative as a member of Vice President Gore’s National Partnership for Reinventing Government.