Jargon-buster free ebook

Check out our new free e-booklet - Unravelling legal jargon. It's on the homepage of our website.

I won't give you a link directly to it, because also on the homepage is a link to our 30 second survey. We'd love you to take a moment to tell us the biggest problem you see in business documents that come over your desk.

By the way, we change the homepage often, so please keep checking.

Waffle equals waste

Bill English doesn't seem too impressed with government writing. In a media conference today, his message was pretty clear: 'there's too much waffle in government departments and it has to stop'.

We know that hundreds of government employees do care about clear, purposeful writing (many of them vie for a place in the annual WriteMark Plain English Awards), but I don't think many members of the public will disagree with Mr English.

That 'waffle' --- evidence of woolly thinking, complex processes, lack of purpose, and poor language skills --- chews up taxpayer dollars. Waffle equals waste. And at a time when the economic news is still somewhat sobering, we expect better.

Read the TV3 article

End of Quality Web Content workshops

(A joint message from Write and Rachel McAlpine)

For seven years Write has offered Rachel McAlpine's training workshops for web writers in New Zealand. These workshops were licensed under the Quality Web Content (QWC) brand. The time has come to terminate the QWC agreement and this year Write will develop its own face-to-face workshops in web writing.

All Rachel McAlpine's new e-learning courses carry the Contented brand. They are all online and available worldwide for groups of up to 1000.

Both companies are building on obvious strengths: Write's expertise in live training workshops and Contented's success with international e-learning courses.

We will continue to work together in many other ways as we respond to the needs of a changing market.

Information about Write's workshops: http://www.write.co.nz/
Information about just-in-time online courses: http://www.contented.com/

Stormy forecast for plain language

How do you make specialised subjects accessible to a non-specialised audience? How do you convey technical information with clarity and precision, in a way that the layperson can understand?

We're often asked these sorts of questions. And it doesn't take long before someone brings up the perennial charge of 'plain language = dumbing down'.

But we think making your language clear is 'smartening up'!

A recent post by Skyler Goldman on the American Meteorological Society blog wonders if the messages about such topics as climate change are getting through. 'Making more scientific work available to the public in plain language would increase awareness.'

Read the full post here: http://blog.ametsoc.org/uncategorized/making-the-public-aware-of-the-science/

New Zealand law requires financial advisers to communicate clearly

Moving on from our previous post about US financial advisers and plain English, New Zealand advisers are already required to make themselves clear.

Code Standard 6 came into force on 1 December 2010, and says: ‘An Authorised Financial Adviser must behave professionally in all dealings with a client, and communicate clearly, concisely, and effectively.’

Read the full Code at http://financialadvisercode.govt.nz/

Catriona Grover, a partner at Kensington Swan law firm, presented on the new Code at the 11th Annual Super Funds Summit in March 2010. She said that the Capital Market Development Taskforce ‘recommends simplifying and standardising disclosure documentation’. This will help investors know exactly what they are investing in. So, expect disclosure documents to, in Catriona’s words:

• ‘feature prescribed wording in concise plain English
• be comprised of two parts, a very short prescribed overview and a longer "further information" document’.

Plain language legislation in the USA requires financial advisers to write clearly

Plain language legislation in the United States is starting to have an effect. Financial advisers are getting nervous about their 31 March deadline, when they must give their clients investment philosophies, fee schedules, and ‘conflict of interest’ documents that are written in plain English.

http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20110123/REG/301239983

Hopefully, some of the new documents will be good enough for a ClearMark award (the US equivalent of the WriteMark Plain English Awards in New Zealand). Our own Lynda Harris will be one of the international judges for ClearMark this year.

http://centerforplainlanguage.org/awards/

http://www.plainenglishawards.org.nz/

Do ‘Kiwis’ really say what they mean?

On Monday, I read (and laughed with) this article from the Washington Post.

On Tuesday, a friend commented that she loved being a Kiwi (a New Zealander) because ‘we say what we mean—we don’t hide behind silly words’.

By Friday, and after a week back at work, I’m still pondering her comment. Eight years as a Plain English Specialist in New Zealand, I have to suggest that ‘saying what we mean’ hasn’t always been my experience—especially in the world of business communication.

For example ‘management has become cognisant of the necessity of eliminating vegetation from the periphery of the facility’ surely means ‘we need to weed our gardens’.

We’d love to know what you think? Or to read examples of writing you’ve seen recently.