In this issue:

Three Views on Plain Language Training

• Another Day, Another Semicolon Martin Cutts

• A Comment on Training Needs in Plain Language Cheryl Stephens

• Assessing Skills Transfer in Plain Language Training Janet Dean

• It's ALL English, You Say?

• New Year's Resolutions Kathrin Lake

• Information about Rapport

Three Views on Plain Language Training

The written word remains one of the great battlefields of office life, which the advent of the internet and voice recognition software has done little to pacify. In the thick of the action are those managers who undermine the morale of their troops by fiddling unnecessarily with perfectly adequate drafts, just to show who's boss; then there are the 'poor bloody infantry', often under intense pressure to complete letters and reports, but short of the skills and experience they need to do the job well.

Is there help out there?

Into this scene of strife rides the writing-skills training professional - lambent, sure-footed, perennially optimistic, and equipped with all the answers on matters linguistic, legal, sociological and psychological. Well, I can dream.

After presenting some two thousand in-house writing courses across the UK in the last eighteen years, I feel more like a wary, battle-scarred mercenary.

Yes, for the thousandth time, Jane Austen really did start sentences with 'But', so you can do the same if you want to - despite what Mr Froggett, your English teacher, said ninety years ago. And you can end them with prepositions, too, which will probably be verbal particles. And yes, I agree it's a bit odd that the only person here who can recognise a passive verb was educated in France, Germany or Holland.

Making the training work for all

What tips, then, can I offer anyone who enters this trade? I will give six.

• The first key to a good course is surely relevance.
  Beyond the basics, it's little use - and deadly dull for the presenter - to deliver a standard package. Presenters need to know their material well enough to adapt it to the needs of their audience, both in its level of difficulty and its timing.
  To help with relevance, I will usually see examples of participants' writing two weeks before the course. If permitted, I can use them during the event as the basis for comment and discussion, perhaps creating some exercises from them.
• The second key is the active involvement of the participants.
  How people loathe being lectured to! So it's a mixture of short and long tasks; individual and group work; demonstrations on the flip chart and overhead projector; variety, variety, variety.
• The third key is pace.
  Too fast and you lose your audience. Too slow and tedium ensues.
• The fourth key is pitching it at the right level.
  Too high and you confuse. Too low and you insult. So, with a group of mixed ability and different levels of prior knowledge, presenters need to be expert jugglers too.
• The fifth key is feedback - intelligent, reasonable and candid - to the solutions that participants suggest.
  Feedback can come from the group members themselves, though it often seems to cluster at the extremes of brutality or too-facile acceptance; and from the presenter, who needs to hold the ring, present a balanced view, maintain the pace, and all the while be omniscient enough to raise all the good and bad points the participants have missed.
• The sixth key is ego.
  Presenters are not in the room to show how clever they are, but to help others develop their skills. That said, they need the background and depth to cope when challenged or hard-pressed by the often experienced writers who attend a course - even if only to refer people to authoritative sources elsewhere.

Addressing expectations

Where's plain language in all this? Describing events as 'plain language courses' still seems to attract an audience in the UK and some other countries where I've worked, but it creates expectations that might take an hour to mould or to dispel. So it's important to show that choosing 'plain' vocabulary (that is, appropriate to the audience) is only a small part of what a good writing-skills course can offer. There's also clarifying the purpose of the writing task; planning the content; organising the material coherently for the reader's benefit; and getting the tone of voice right.

Empathy with audience

And above all, there's empathy: because if writers can't put themselves in the readers' shoes, they might as well find a job that doesn't involve writing. Empathy is hellish difficult to teach. I once began a course by outlining the importance of clarity and simplicity, so that readers would readily be able to comprehend the message, only to be interrupted by a stentorian voice asking: 'Why?' He wasn't joking, either. He genuinely couldn't see the point: if people couldn't understand things, that was their fault - they had failed the literacy test and must take the consequences.

I still find presenting courses mightily rewarding: there's still so much feeble business writing around, and it's rare for me to finish a course without a real sense of achievement - sometimes even a sense of having changed people's lives for ever. Managers - if they can be attracted to attend - will have seen new ways of supervising writing successfully; while their staff will have discovered new skills or refreshed those long-forgotten. What the future holds

One day, all writing-skills courses may be online. People will tap an answer into a machine, but they won't get to see the whites of the programmer's eyes and shoot him the killer question. Nor will they get anything like intelligent feedback. The role of the travelling presenter will exist for a good while to come, I guess.

A mark of distinction
Plain Language Commission, a business owned by Martin Cutts, recently gave its four thousandth Clear English Standard accreditation to documents that have met its test of clarity, good grammar and sound layout. The Clear English Standard mark is now widely seen throughout the UK on forms, booklets, legal agreements and leaflets published by government departments, local authorities and companies. The cost of using the scheme starts as low as £100 sterling, and the service is supported by rapid and detailed editing, often with a three-day turn-round. For more details, see www.plainlanguage.demon.co.uk

Plain Language is more than a checklist

New advocates of plain language cling to checklists of writing rules when they would do better to investigate traditional rhetoric and writing process models which form the basis of the plain language approach. Information design, document design and testing through an assortment of evaluation techniques are also integral to the plain language approach.

I will mention here some areas of knowledge that I have learned are needed to "do plain language work" in a broader context than production of a single document. Plain language consultants need at least a superficial understanding of these related fields.

Approaches to the plain language goal

I believe we are seeing three different approaches to "plain language" in the late '90s. These three focuses in plain language research and applications are also the sources of differing training needs:

1. plain language writing, editing and design
2. plain language process: audience research, document generation, information design, testing
3. plain language project management and policy implementation

These different approachs are, I believe, the grounding of different perspectives on whether it is possible or desirable to certify expertise in plain language.

We hope to resolve some of our differences of opinion on qualifications at the Plain Language in Progress Conference of the Plain Language Consultants Network February 25-27, 2000 in Houston, Texas (information available at ).

More than language skills

Plain language projects can require expertise in these fields:

• Interface design
• Needs assessment and curriculum design
• Oral communications
• Field research skills
• Project management
• Cross-functional teamwork
• Organizational behavior, culture, and change management
• Ethical and legal aspects of public information and disclosure

Plain language consultants need to acquire knwledge of these fields and an appreciation of the situations in which other professionals should be consulted.

Corporate and government clients prefer to hire someone who is already familiar with their industry or field. So, plain language consultants tend to specialize in their area of content expertise.

This often happens when the plain language goal will require both organizational change and policy development and implementation. These require an understanding or assessment of the communications needs of the organization or its customers or clients. The best approach still engages experts with the needed skills, such as, communication and language experts, management and process experts, human thinking and behavior experts. Without this the program often produces a poor result and a backlash against plain language.

Thom Haller, of Information Architects, holds another view of what students need to learn from other fields in order to organize information in a way that is user-focused. See his chart at his site.

What constraints do we face in our work?

Training must also prepare practitioners to confront and overcome the typical constraints we encounter. In law, business, and government, there are many constraints on writers. If we honestly face the constraints inherent in the project, we can anticipate and plan for them. We can also be more realistic about the result we expect to achieve. Some of the common constraints are:

• limited resources: money, time, staff
• time limits or deadlines
• protocols, policies, rules, regulations
• compulsory formats or equipment limitations
• compromises or negotiations required
• lack of knowledge of subject or audience

Design options must be known to the writer

Plain language is concerned with choice of format and design. Many plain language writing projects evolve into multi-media events in order to best meet the needs of readers or users. For some persons with disabilities or infirmities, video recordings and interactive computer programs may be the preferred method for recording information such as one's will or instructions to medical care givers. When the proper choice seems to be an alternative to a written document, the expertise of other professions is needed.

Evaluating the Product

Students of writing should learn how to evaluate documents. They should learn how to conduct interviews and demonstrations, facilitate focus groups, obtain protocol-aided revisions.

Unfortunately, the evaluation phase is usually struck out when the budget forces a project manager to make cutbacks. This is a fact of life -- one of the constraints to anticipate -- but one can still manage some testing within available resources.

Because testing is considered the decisive factor, students should learn informal and inexpensive ways to test material on a sample of the intended audience.

Students who learn to use methods like these to obtain reader feedback on their own writing or that of others, gain valuable insight. They become sensitized to readers and can, in future projects, anticipate readers' responses.

Learn how to use readability test scores

Many plain language advocates reject readability tests outright because of their limitations and the fact that they do not test comprehensibility. Readability tests, with their curvilinear mathematical formula, are not considered valid beyond the grade 12 level. Beyond that point, other education and life experience become very important in assessing a reader's ability to comprehend a document. Material that meets a grade-level standard may still be unclear or incomprehensible to the target readers, especially if they have a different language or cultural background.

Nonetheless, students should learn to use and evaluate these tests which are in widespread use.

In certain bureaucracies, these tests are valued because they produce statistical data that can be used to establish evidence of existing problems and measure advances made from revisions to documents.

Plain Language training needs lots of discussion

This is just a beginning of this discussion which I hope will attract both plain language advocates and professionals in curriculum design and adult education.

Cheryl Stephens is a legal educator, plain language editor, and communications and marketing consultant. cheryl@plainlanguage.com

Assessing essential skill development is a challenge for adult educators -- particularly in the instructional situation where students receive skills training with an expectation of workplace transfer. Plain language writing training is an example of such a situation.

How is student success evaluated? A post-course evaluation mainly measures students' "feelings" towards the course and the instructor. A final exam is most effective for measuring immediate performance under specified conditions but seldom has long-lasting transfer to the workplace. Assignments best demonstrate skills under specified, controlled conditions. If these traditional assessment tools are ineffective, how can we determine if students leaving our writing classrooms have the ability to communicate using plain language? The answer is simple, WE cannot.

A key attribute of an effective learner is the ability to critically analyze their own achievements and progress. Self- assessment is an effective tool for evaluating skills- transfer, as the learner must take responsibility and ownership of the learning process.

The means for successful self-assessment must be built into your course design. It is enhanced by providing:

• A clear statements of learning outcomes
• Criteria and examples which describe competent performance (for example: relevant "before" and "after" samples)
• A model for collecting indirect evidence from the audience of the communication (the development of focus-group or audience-research skills)
• A means for evaluating direct evidence from one's own experiences (for example: self-assessment checklists)
• Appropriate standards against which to judge ones' experiences and actions (for example: a set of plain language "rules")

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes explained at the beginning of the training session encourage learners to take responsibility for their own learning. If learners are advised that "by the end of the training session, you should be able to..." , they can measure their own progress and take the appropriate actions to support those outcomes.

Competencies

The level of competency expected must be known by learners for it to be achieved. For example, core competencies in plain language writing may be articulated by describing the audience response required. The quality of a redrafted letter may be evaluated by the number of telephone inquiries in response. Competencies can also be measured by word counts, the fog index and other external tools.

Another example would be the inclusion of participation as a component of learner evaluation. It is hard for the learner to understand what is a necessary level and quality of participation for them to achieve. If you describe the core competencies of participation to be preparation, engagement, and collaboration, the learner is more likely able to demonstrate competency to the appropriate standard.

Indirect evidence

What others say about the skills of the learner is indirect evidence of those skills. Skills can be evidenced by the action or lack of action as a result of the communication. Evidence can be collected by formal audience research methods such as focus groups or it may be anecdotal in nature. In the classroom, it can be evidenced through peer assessments. The role of the plain language instructor includes ensuring the development of such research skills.

Direct evidence

Direct evidence refers to what learners say about themselves. It can be generated through self- assessment checklists but may also be evidenced through published works and products developed by the learner. In the classroom, it can be generated through the use of case studies or by analysis of the learner's own workplace writing examples.

Standards

Through effective feedback, the learner adjusts and adapts performance. Effective feedback must include detailed descriptions of what the learner did and did not do relative to shared, appropriate standards. Effective assessment provides opportunities for the learner to use the feedback to self-adjust according to the articulated standards. A contentious issue in the field of plain language, standards generally ensure a greater degree of skill development.

In the participation example, standards relating to the competencies of participation could include:

• Complete all assignments and readings prior to class and be prepared to begin on time
• Join in all class and small group discussions
• Work in small groups as a team.

The learner's perspective

The following diagram is based on recent work in learning assessment and extrapolates from the above by focusing on the key components of effective self-assessment from the learner's perspective.

This model can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of instruction in developing transferable skills but most importantly should be developed as an on-going tool for evaluating plain language communication success outside of the classroom.

By teaching learners this model of self-assessment, you ensure a thorough self-analysis that allows for the vagaries of audience-driven communication. It also becomes a model that can be continuously applied.Conclusion

To ensure thorough skills development and workplace transfer, both instructor and learner must be committed to the use of self-assessment. The instructor must include time in the lesson plans to develop the skills and modify their curriculum and evaluation models to support self-assessment. Learners must commit to ongoing, thorough self-assessment and skills-development.

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Janet Dean is an adult educator and Executive Director of the Practice Development Group Inc. She has developed curriculum for over 20 communications courses offered at community colleges, University colleges and private industry. She designed the hallmark Plain Language: Tools of the Trade course for Plain Language Partners Ltd. Janet can be reached at jde@web.net.

Conference Previews

The Expanding Role of Information Design

William DuBay

It wasn't too long ago that "Information Design" meant "layout," and dealt mainly with typeface choice, type sizes, margins, and the arrangement of graphic and text elements on a page, in short, the tasks associated with the production end of creating documents.

In the last few years, things have changed a lot. Information design has come to include not only the look-and-feel of a document but also issues of usability, genre, language, rhetoric, task analysis, management, quality, and audience. In the field of technical communications, there are few aspects of the profession that have not come under the umbrella of information design. Indeed, some technical communicators are now marketing themselves as information designers.

At the 1997 annual conference of the Society for Technical Communications, there were two presentations on information design. In 1998, there were five presentations, and in 1999, 14. These included topics such as functional thinking and writing, selection of learning products, the presenting of quantitative information, workplace genres, just-in-time assistance, information-system design, cognitive science, and single sourcing.

The expanding role of information design is not surprising when we consider the findings of modern research on how people read and use documents. From these studies, we now know more about how people use texts and how to engage them with the texts. These same studies put plain language in the context of the reader's real situation and abilities. It is no longer enough to choose the right words. We must also motivate the reader to read them.

+ + + Bill DuBay is a Principal Technical Writer at Phoenix Technologies Ltd. in California. He will join Ron Scheer to discuss Information Design in Houston.

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Plain Language Globalisation -- Profile of a European project

Kate Harrison

I moved from Calgary, Canada to a small Northwest England town in 1998. I packed up my plain language resources, notebook computer and hoped for the best. I should never have doubted the plain language consultant's versatility. Within a month of moving I was contracted by Lancaster University to provide plain language editing to a very unique European project - ACROSS. With the new European Economic Union, many countries, companies and colleagues are sharing resources, information and ideas.

ACROSS Project Profile
The ACROSS project was attempting to research, refine and report on the roles of programme managers, particularly in the human resources, training and education fields throughout Europe. Its purpose was to look for common challenges and offer solutions. I was surprised to see the shared needs as expressed by representatives from eight countries.

The plain language project, originating throughout Europe but edited in England, was a wonderful challenge to the whole concept of plain language.

It involved editing a document based on submissions from eight countries in the European Economic Union (EEU) in English as their second language. From Iceland to Finland, Portugal to Greece, Austria to Denmark, England to Belgium, the authors put in their own words (in English) what a training programme manager's job involved and what the manager needed for future success.

The challenge -- and best learning experience - came from the balancing act between clarifying for coherence and simplifying for conciseness. Each of the eight submissions was coloured with cultural innuendo and emotion that provided personality that we did not want lose.

We strove for strong, clear words with global understanding, while still capturing the cultural differences in emphasis and meaning. The Danish project co-ordinator patiently explained the social, historical, political and cultural importance of the political and professional environments for each country - and for each report.

Second language editing requires careful assessment of terms with double, hidden or situational meanings. The authors tended to use more words than necessary to make a point, often in passive language. But, these problems appear to be universal, confirming the need for plain language worldwide.

I would encourage you to visit the ACROSS web site as the information was as universal as the plain language process used to edit the final document. Such a broad-based research project on our roles as project or programme managers - which many of us do on a daily basis in some form or other - completed with such depth can only be a useful tool. It moves across borders, languages and jobs smoothly.

I took risks in my business when I committed to plain language as my primary service. It hasn't always been easy. But, my commitment has been continually strengthened by project success stories, customer satisfaction, quality products and now the more widespread use of it on the WEB. The global aspect simply means adding cultural awareness to the equation.

See the ACROSS site.

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Kate Harrison is now Web Editor of This Is the Lake District for Newsquest, a division of Gannett.

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It's ALL English, You Say?

From Global Writers Links available at Inkspot.com

I wish I had had access to a resource like this when I started publishing Rapport in 1992. I am sure you will find these sites very interesting -- they show you that "plain English" is a difficult standard to meet when "English" itself has so many varieties. And these links don't include other versions in use throughout the Commonwealth!

There are many more links at this site than I have included here.

Language, Dictionaries, and Translation
The American-British/British-American Dictionary
This excellent site includes a search engine, slang, spelling differences, various regional and occupation slang dictionaries, and lists of abbreviations, money, dates, holidays, kings and queens, etc. (plus U.S. equivalents).

http://www.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/dict-toc.html

Britspeak: English as a Second Language for AmericansBR> Includes dictionaries, links, and some tongue-in-cheek commentaries.

http://pages.prodigy.com/NY/NYC/britspk/main.html

The Economist Style Guide
A guide to business and correspondence writing in UK English.

http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/library/index_styleguide.html

English to English
An American-to-British Dictionary

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atlantis/2284/

Mike's English-American Dictionary
A comprehensive and amusing site, categorized by subjects such as people, motoring, around the house, food and wine, etc.; includes detailed explanations of British meanings.

http://www.effingpot.com

What a Load of Codswallop, Pet!
Subtitled "words that could be confusing and embarrassing in the UK and U.S.," this is an amusing look at the differences in our languages, with links to other, more scholarly sites.

http://www.wmin.ac.uk/~sfgva/ukus.htm

WWlib - Notes on American English
A more serious look at language differences. American words are listed alphabetically with the equivalent English word; some include explanations.

http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/wwlib/american.html

And, see this useful article:

Worldwide English for the Web: An interview with Megan Knight by Ron Scheer at http://ronscheer.com/html/readingroom8.html

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Cheryl Stephens

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Ten New Year's Resolution to improve your written business communications

Kathrin Lake

Choose one of these stellar writing tips to start the millenium off with clarity and style.

1. I will dare to use short, snappy sentences in my business prose to wake people up. Short is powerful.
2. I will create a mini custom thesaurus for my desk by choosing eight words I commonly use in my business writing, and finding at least six exciting alternatives for each.
3. I will stop being adjective-happy and try to eliminate "very," "really" and "just" from my writing.
4. I will avoid using unnecessarily complex or obsolete words and phrases. EXAMPLES: "Hence" will become "Therefore," "draw to you attention" will become "point out" and "ascertain" will become "find out."
5. Whenever possible, I will phrase things positively. EXAMPLE: "She was not thinking it was relevant," becomes, "She thought it was irrelevant."
6. Before I write a letter, report or a proposal I will get very clear on its purpose, or the desired results it should achieve. I will also take the time to consider my readers' expectations and preferences.
7. I will refrain from using the cliché "in" phrases such as "in conclusion," and "in regard to." SUGGESTIONS: "the upshot," "the outcome," "the final word" and "regarding," "concerning," and "about."
8. I will sprinkle periods throughout my paragraphs, creating more sentences, and allowing my readers to digest what I am saying.
9. I will curb my appetite to make countless corrections when editing others' writing. H. G. Wells said that no passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's text. I will let people have their own style.
10. I will wait a day before sending out angry e-mails, or I will get someone less impassioned to read it over before sending it.

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With permission from Practice Development Group Inc.

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Information about Rapport: News about plain language

Rapport publishes annually online. Please continue to send in your reports, exemplary documents, event announcements, book reviews and so on. Looking forward to seeing you in the next issue for the year 2000.

Published by Rapport Communication Projects, of The Precedent Group, Consultants.
Cheryl Stephens and Allen H. Soroka, Principals
P.O. Box 33813, Station D,
Vancouver, British Columbia V7X 1A1 Canada

Phone 1 (604) 739-0443 Fax 1 (604) 739-0522
E-mail cheryl@plainlanguage.com
http://plainlanguage.com

Please write us for permission for any use of this copyrighted material.

Managing Editor: Cheryl M. Stephens, Vancouver, Canada

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