Most of us, when writing, are not framing Dantian thoughts. We should stick to a plain approach. Our age prefers it... Your readers are the ones, finally, who matter: You have invited them to attend your words, you seek their precious time, and you ma y even expect to be paid for your efforts. Courtesy requires that you show your readers some grace and consideration.

The Minister of Multiculturalism and Citizenship The Office of the Minister of Multiculturalism and Citizenship of Canada says, in Plain Language: Clear and Simple:

Plain language writing is a technique of organizing information in ways that make sense to the reader. It uses straightforward, concrete, familiar words. You can use these techniques to adapt what you have to say to the reading abilities of t he people who are likely to read your document. Using plain language to explain concepts and procedures involves using examples that relate to your reader's experience...

reaches people who cannot read well

helps all readers understand information

avoids misunderstandings and errors

saves time, because it gets the job done well the first time

Plain language is a technique of organizing information in ways that make sense to the reader, and thinking about your reader first and foremost and using language that is appropriate for your audience's reading skills.

The Plain Language Institute of British Columbia
In its annual report for 1991-1992, the Plain Language Institute answered this question:

When we first tell people that we promote the use of plain language in legal documents, most breathe a sigh of relief. They think they will never again have to wade through Latin, archaic English, or incomprehensible legal terms. But when you work with the language of law or government, you quickly realize that the challenge of plain language goes far beyond vocabulary. You also have to think about how words are used, sentences constructed, documents designed, and how people infer meaning from words.

But even well-organized sentences that use commonly understood words can be presented on the page in a way that makes the message hard to understand. organizations such as the Communications Research Institute in Australia and the American Document Desig n Centre have done a great deal of work to understand how design affects readability. They have helped create a body of knowledge about almost every aspect of how words appear on paper.

Despite all that we have learned, defining what is "plain" remains elusive. What is completely understandable to one reader may be beyond another's comprehension. Mark Vale, a specialist in clear language and information management, points our that word s are merely symbols, and have no inherent meaning.

Meaning exists in the minds of people. If they wish to communicate with one another, they must choose symbols which mean similar things to both writer and reader. But how do we know what meaning a reader will give to any particular word symbol? Our tas k is made even more difficult, and more critical, with the knowledge that more than one in three Canadian adults have some difficulty reading.

Reading theorists point out that people receive meaning from text by reading a sentence and inferring the author's meaning from it. The ability to make the correct inference depends on, and varies with, the knowledge each reader has of the world in gener al and the specific concepts which the writer addressed. Asking "What does my reader know and understand?" can help the writer choose appropriate words to deliver a message.

The best way to know how readers will interpret words is to ask them. Plain language means testing documents. Many people fear document testing is an expensive and time-consuming process. But there are many ways to test a document that need not be a va cuum for money and time. For certain critical and widely distributed documents, even expensive tests are cheaper than the economic, social and personal costs that result when people are unable to understand the documents important to their lives.

Plain language is not, as some suggest, "sending Dick and Jane to court." Nor is it a false art of rendering English down to a small monosyllabic vocabulary. It is the appropriate and correct use of the full vocabulary in well-structured sentences, follo wing established rules of grammar. It is language that is free of jargon and chosen with sensitivity to the needs and prior knowledge of the intended reader.

Cheryl Stephens, Editor of Rapport
How many people have asked you that question? In my kinder moments, I think there are two types who ask it: the innocent and the damned.

The questions recalls a story:

"An eager young musician with his sights set on stardom had the good fortune to meet in person Louis Armstrong, the famous trumpeter. Wanting to make the most of this occasion, this fledgeling musician asked, 'Oh Mr. Armstrong, tell me how yo u play so great so maybe someday I can be famous, too!'

Louis Armstrong paused a minute, looked the young man up and down, croaked, 'Sonny, if you got to have it 'splained to ya', ya' prob'ly shouldn't mess with it.'"

I think you can fulfil every commandment, abide by every check list, and still not achieve plain language. That's because your success is measured by the reader's ease, not by your own toil. Louis Armstrong might say if people like what you write, you'r e doing ok.

For the innocent and for the professional who must answer the question put by the innocent, I am starting a column collecting plain language definitions by some brave souls.

Dan Quayle won with this remark to journalists:

We offer the party as a big tent. How we do that within the platform, the preamble to the platform or whatnot, that remains to be seen. But that message will have to be articulated with great clarity.

Rapport would like to give the Inside Out Award for multiple negative to another of George Bush's minions, John Sununu. Resigning from his position as chief of staff, Mr. Sununu wrote:

But in politics, especially during the seasons of a political campaign, perceptions that can be effectively dealt with at other times can be - and will be - converted real political negatives. And I would never want to not be contributing pos itively, much less be a drag on your success.

Texas: 1992 Legaldegook Awards
The Plain Language Committee of the State Bar of Texas has released the 1992 Legaldegook Awards. In future issues we'll print some winners. In this issue, Rapport shares some of Committee Chairman Bryan A. Garner's comments about the awards.

"It has been said -- unfairly, on the whole -- that lawyers are to the English language what vandals are to a great public building. Our goal is to make that qualification, "on the whole", unnecessary.

But our job of eliminating legaldegook will probably never be finished, because every generation of lawyers must relearn the mother tongue after unlearning it in law school. The chief aim of the novice law student, after all, is to acquire the high falut in language of the law; the chief aim of the seasoned lawyer is to shed it.

Survey after survey in the English-speaking world demonstrates how serious a problem legaldegook is in the public mind. Does this issue really matter? Consider the Australian survey, conducted few years ago, showing that lawyers and judges take twice as long to decipher legalistically worded statutes as they do to understand plain-language versions that are substantively identical. Must we spend thousands of dollars here to prove that it's just as true in Austin as it is in Sydney? Thomas Jefferson hi mself knew the answer merely by applying common sense.*

The law's heritage is not, after all, entirely shabby -- so it seems fitting to honor our forerunners who championed simplicity.

The State Bar of Texas is doing its part in the worldwide effort to improve legal communication. If our profession continues to narrow the communicative gulf between lawyer and nonlawyer, all of society will benefit."

* Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence. He described legalese in this complaint about statutes:

from their verbosity, their endless tautologies, their involutions of case within case, a nd parenthesis within parenthesis, and their multiplied efforts at certainty, by saids and aforesaids, by ors and ands, to make them more plain, are real ly rendered more perplexed and incomprehensible, not only to common readers but to lawyers themselves.

The Uninviting Invitation Award for the Invitation Least Likely to Be Accepted Gleefully
Pursuant to the aforesaid, I would now sincerely request that you consider the within correspondence as a formal invitation to make an appearance so as to advise of your expertise and the various day to day rocedures involving same.

In addition to the aforesaid, we might have numerous attendees. Accordingly, I would now respectfully request your consideration with respect to an appearance and ask that your assistant establish contact with my office so that arrangements can be made at a time convenient with your schedule.

I now thank you for your sincere attention to the above and shall await your response as relevant to the same.

Plain English Awards
Canadian Council of Teachers of English
Task Force on Doublespeak

Ottawa Citizen columnist Don McGillivray received the 1992 Plain English Award from the Canadian Council of Teachers of English for continuing service in exposing Public Doublespeak and in particular for his column, "One man's replacement worker is anothe r's scab."

McGillivray saw that CBC coverage of strikes has replaced the words "strikebreakers" or "scabs" with "replacement workers". He connected this to the political correctness of the right.

McGillivray traced this word change to a note in a Fraser Institute publication which claimed "This change in CBC's coverage of labour disputes reaffirms the view that television news is able to present issues in a fair and balanced manner."

"That is the authentic voice of political correctness," noted McGillivray. "People who use our preferred words are fair and balanced. People who use the other side's words are unfair and unbalanced."

The Task Force let the McGillivray award serve the function of exposing the public doublespeak of the Fraser Institute for "coercing the CBC to eliminate bias in its coverage of 'labour disruptions' (strikes?) by employing the term "replacement workers".< P> The Plain English Award and its companion piece, the Public Doublespeak Award was presented annually by the CCTE Task Force on Public Doublespeak chaired by Dr. Phillip Allingham of the University of British Columbia Department of English. Unfortunately, the task force is now defunct.

The Public Doublespeak Award was given for language that stopped short of being an absolute lie but would be misinterpreted in ways that serve the interests of the speaker.

Honourable mentions in the Plain English Award category went to:

Lawyer Caroline Askew, for noting the practice of lobby groups adopting neutral, innocuous sounding names to disguise the purposes and motives of the group. Askew pointed out that the "National Citizens Coalition" is "a group of business people, managers, company presidents, and business organizations who have traditionally opposed the goals of unions to improve wages, working conditions and quality of life for their members."

CBC Radio's Arthur Black, who noted "A lot more Canadians are getting fired these days although it is seldom called that any more. Wage earners are plucked from payrolls by a whole host of weasel-worded philosophies like 'streamlining', 'downsizin g', and 'workforce outplacement'".

Previous winners of the awards:

Plain English Awards

Cy Whitely, Ottawa public servant, who revised over a thousand government documents changing phrases like "afix your signature" to the plain word "sign".

Public Doublespeak Awards

A B.C. Ministry of Education official who renamed "teachers" as "on-site facilitators of pupil learning".

B.C. Social Credit Provincial Secretary Bill Reid, "If it is outside the guidelines, then it was irregular, but that's not unusual."

Canada Post, for an announcement that it would "streamline and enhance" mail collection by eliminating one-fifth of the mailboxes in the City, mostly in residential areas.

Unclear writing in professional, official and legal documents denies people knowledge of their rights, obligations and choices. "People are so fed up with bafflegab," says Phil Knight, executive director of the Plain Language Institute of British Columbia, "that 92 per cent of respondents to a survey we commissioned agreed that the government should pass a law requiring that documents be written in plain, easy to understand language and 65 per cent said the government should spend tax dollars to solve the problem."

"The set-up costs for implementing a plain language system are often a fraction of the total cost savings which would result. In Australia, for example, the Capita Financial Corporation found more than 1,560 information errors in its 200 administrative f orms," said Knight. "The cost of consolidating, rewriting, and redesigning the forms was $100,000 but the changes resulted in savings estimated at $400,000 per year. Similarly, the Department of Health and Social Security in Great Britain spent about $5 0,000 to develop and test plain language forms but has saved more than $2 million in staff time every year."

At the conference, discussion groups and practical workshops addressed the issues of language and law. Readers and writers were provided with an opportunity to share their understanding of language and meaning, and to discuss how to communicate more effe ctively. Statistics Canada data presented at the conference showed that 15 per cent of the adult population have great difficulty reading printed text while 25 per cent have some difficulty. This was reinforced by Kenneth Dye, president and CEO of the Wo rkers' Compensation Board of B.C. "Long words bother me," was his opening line, a direct quote from Winnie the Pooh. Putting his sentiment into practice, he told conference participants that WCB recently scaled down 1,700 forms in its appeal division to 1,042 by using plain language.

"In Alberta, we've been bold in our approach to plain language," said Dennis Anderson, Alberta Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. "We've developed the first act we know of in the Commonwealth [the Financial Consumers Act] that requires plain lan guage in financial documents between buyer and seller."

It's clear that lawyers and business people need to re-educate themselves so that people in the real world are able to understand the messages they deliver," Knight said. "Unclear communications or bafflegab, as we like to call it, simple does not do the job."

The Institute's message is that poor writing undermines good communications and clear, modern language results in fewer misunderstandings, adding to the clarity of the message. Above all, the Institute maintains that plain language practice produces doc uments which meet the needs of readers because it identifies those needs and writes and edits to address them.

Two English Presentations at the Just Language Conference
This report was prepared by Rapport from the presenters' materials.

Martin Cutts has worked in the plain language field since 1975 when he left Liverpool University with a degree in English, Italian and Psychology. He conceived and co-founded an enterprise known as the Plain English Campaign in 1979, remaining a pa rtner there until 1988 when he left to form Words at Work. Cutts has written several books on plain language, most recently, Making Sense of English in the Law (Chambers, 1992). Cutts spoke about "Rewriting and redesigning a United Kingdom Act of Parli ament":

This project is about making Acts of Parliament more understandable to those who must read them: the public, judges, parliamentarians, and lawyers. In particular, the project is revising the language and typography of the Timeshare Act 1992. The revision aims to stimulate reform of the language and layout of statutes. It seeks to put pressure on MPs and the parliamentary counsel (drafters) to consider clearer ways of expressing the law.

Parliamentary counsel are known to consider that modern British Acts are written in the plainest language possible, given the pressures of deadlines, MPs' last-minute amendments, and the machinations of ministers and civil servants. In 1987, the then Fir st Parliamentary Counsel challenged me to do better if I could. The project responds to the challenge.

The project is in two phases. First, consultation, in which interested parties in the UK and abroad will be asked for their views on the revised Act and an accompanying report. ...

The second phase will incorporate those comments into a further revision; a final publication about the project is then envisaged.

Timeshare selling has been the focus of much public criticism for the high blood pressure tactics used by sales staff. The Act provides a cooling-off period for customers who sign timeshare agreements and says that a seller must give customers a notice i nforming them of their right to cancel. A chunk of the Act has to be reproduced in this notice, yet it is in legalistic language without any attempt at explanation. Once sentence goes on for 102 words and includes terms like "offeror", "creditor" and " offeree". The mandatory use of such an extract in a mandatory document belies the notion that few members of the public ever have to read or understand the language of the law.

Adler's presentation was previously published in the New Law Journal, July 26, 1991, under the title, "Bamboozling the Public".

Adler chose a solicitor's letter which was not badly written by the normal standards of the profession. It concerned and attempted to confirm an agreement concerning a financial settlement worked out between the solicitor's client and his estranged wife who was not represented by counsel.

Adler sent the letter and a questionnaire about it to 150 clients, chosen at random, all but one of whom were native English-speakers. 77 questionnaires were returned including one from the wife in question.

73 people thought they understood some of the letter while only 3 did not. Only 29 thought they understood it all, but, after answering substantive questions about the letter, 4 of those decided they did not understand it after all and 2 others decided t hat they did understand. In fact, none understood it thoroughly.

When asked whether they understood the term "without prejudice", only 10 clearly understood. Of the 29 who though they understood the letter, 23 did not understand "without prejudice".

43% misunderstood in a way that could seriously threaten their rights: 10 actually thought the term meant that the solicitor was acting impartially; 23 thought that accepting the offer would not create a binding agreement. One of these persons thought t hat "without prejudice" meant the solicitor was unbiased while another thought it meant "non committal", and another thought it meant "neutral proposition". Another thought that the term implied that each party would get an equal share of everything!

Only 5 of 77 respondents appreciated the significance of the words, "your marriage has irretrievably broken down". Those 5 understood that condition to constitute grounds for divorce.

One question solicited an interpretation of the effect of "joint ownership" of which only 17 respondents had an inkling.

When asked to comment on the style of the letter, respondents offered these words:

confusing

stuffy

puzzling

sly

prolix

verbose

and pompous.

Adler's report concludes:
The sample was not a fair cross-section of the community, since all had used a solicitor in the past. Many had had regular experience of lawyers. Even so, the level of misunderstanding was frightening, and the experiment offers some important lessons:

Our clients - and other lay people - understand a lot less than we think they do. Those who assure us they understand will often be wrong. We should question clients to check their understanding, even of expressions we take for granted an d proposals we think are clear...

These problems would be greatly reduced if we took the trouble to write clearly. Unfortunately, most lawyers think this is unnecessary.

Robert Eagleson reports on Australian developments
"Lawyers Skills and the Success of Plain Language"

Robert D. Eagleson spoke to the Legal Writing Institute, a conference of teachers of legal writing, held at Tacoma, Washington, USA, in August 1992.

Professor Eagleson, a co-founder of the Centre for Plain Legal Language in Sydney, New South Wales, is currently a consultant with the Australian law firm of Mallesons Stephen Jaques.

A fuller report will appear in the November, 1993 issue of the Michigan Bar Journal. These were Eagleson's remarks about recent activities in Australia:

Plain legal writing has had a new lease on life since 1986 with the release of the report Plain English and the Law by the Law Reform Commission of Victoria. In it we established that legislation could be written in plain language and demonstrated that even highly complex laws could yield to plain expression. The one bastion of legalese that previously had stood outside the thrust for plain language was conquered.

The importance of the report was that it cut the ground from under those lawyers who had been opposing plain language. It is not that all of them even now have abandoned their opposition - or a least diffidence - but it has become harder for them to mount respectable arguments against plain legal drafting.

Equally importantly, within Australia the report has led to many more demands for plain language from influential quarters.

In November 1991 the Martin Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament released its report A Pocket Full of Change on banking. It recommended that:

a requirement for plain English documents be incorporated in the code of banking practice. Plain English documents should be produced urgently ... Priority should be given to producing important consumer documents such as the mortgage and g uarantee.

During 1992 the Joint Committee of Public Accounts has been holding public hearings as part of its inquiry into the Australian Taxation Office. The Committee has extended its investigations to take up the issue of a plain English rewrite of the Income Tax Act.

In August 1992 the Parliamentary Inquiry into Commonwealth legislation and legal drafting began receiving submissions on the drafting practices of Australian Government agencies, including the Office of Parliamentary Counsel. Among the terms of reference are:

• the need for the Commonwealth Government to ensure that its policies are clear and capable of being simply expressed in writing
• the need for Commonwealth drafting agencies and drafters within policy development agencies to be aware of the importance of and trained in simple and straightforward drafting
• the administrative, legal and commercial consequences of inadequately drafted legislation or legal documents

The Chief Secretary in New South Wales announced in August 1992 that the regulations covering raffles, bingos and similar forms of community gaming are to be "remade and updated using plain language". Pleasingly the proposal includes careful scrutiny and modification of the content of the current regulations.

The Office of State Revenue in New South Wales has given instructions to Parliamentary Counsel to start reviewing State tax legislation with a view to expressing it in plain English. This will help to strengthen the hand of Parliamentary Counsel who have already endorsed plain English as their preferred style of drafting.

The Trade Practices Commission is conducting a program of surveys into consumers' experiences with life insurance and superannuation agents. Part of the survey is "a qualitative program to assess the accuracy, objectivity and comprehensibility of documen tation and written and oral advice and information that is provided to consumers".

1. The way lawyers write has been a source of complaint about lawyers for more than four centuries.
2. The language used by lawyers should agree with the common speech, unless there are reasons for a difference.
3. Legalese is unnecessary and no more precise than plain language.
4. Plain language is an important part of good legal writing.
5. Plain language means language that is clear and readily understandable to the intended readers.
6. To encourage the use of plain language, the Legal Writing Institute should try to identify members who would be willing to work with their bar associations to establish plain language committees like those in Michigan and Texas.

The Institute has over 900 members. This membership represents all of the American Bar Association accredited law schools in the U.S. The Institute also has members from English departments, from Canada and Australia, from independent research and consu lting organizations, and from the practicing bar.

Anyone who is interested in legal writing or teaching of legal writing may join the Institute.

For more information, write to

A plea for readable tax forms
Canadian Press reports that a court ordered a man in Victoria, B.C. to pay a $1,000 fine in addition to paying his taxes twice. The man ran a small quarry with a friend. They decided that the friend would claim his income, so he wouldn't have to fill ou t a tax form. He had difficulty reading and filling in the form. He paid his friend half the taxes due. After charges were laid, he filed a personal tax return and paid the tax again.

The man admitted failing to comply with a notice to file a personal tax return. The judge said reducing the minimum fine would invite "a flood of pleas of special circumstance". Let this be a plea for plainer tax forms.

Statistics on Canadian Literacy
According to Statistics Canada, 94% of Canadians between 16 and 69 years old think their reading skills are adequate for their daily activities. Yet only 62% can actually read everyday materials. Another 22% can read material in a familiar context with a simple lay-out. The remaining 16% cannot read well enough to deal with most printed material faced in daily life.

Testing by Bucket Poll
For a creative approach to the public survey consider the method used by C-FAX radio in Victoria, British Columbia on the day of Canada's constitutional referendum.

"C-FAX morning personality Barry Bowman did his show while suspended in a bucket attached to a huge crane, over the main north-south traffic artery in downtown Victoria. As drivers approached the area they saw large signs saying: 'Honk Once f or Yes' and "Honk Twice for No.' C-FAX personnel on the ground using the type of hand-held counters that are popular at tourist attractions and sporting events kept track of the 'votes'."

Multiple Metaphors Mixed
Canadian columnist Robert Fulford scribbled down this gem from the television series, Civil Wars:

"I did not deny that she was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. I said her porch light was on, but dim, and I admitted her elevator didn't stop at all the floors."

How you read
Communications Briefings recently reported on a study of how people read newspapers.

In the study, Eye-Trac Research equipment was used. Tiny television cameras were attached to readers' heads to record all their eye movements. Some of the findings:

Readers don't automatically enter facing pages on the left-hand page and move right. Where they start depends on the size of photos used and the use of color. But they usually enter through a dominant photo on the right and move to a dominant he adline or photo on the left.

The larger a photo, up to three columns wide, the more likely it is that readers will look at it. While 54 percent looked at a one-column photo, 92 percent looked at a three-column photo.

More readers will look at a headline combined with a photo than one that has no photo with it.

People will read more of the text accompanying a group of photos if the photos are in color.

Color screens have no impact on how much text people read.

Strategic Needs
In Strategic Communications, author Burton Kaplan discusses the need to know your audience's own agenda. He says there are three basic categories of needs that underlie most human interactions. They are:

Inclusion.

The need to be noticed and recognized.

Control.

The desire to run the show and a hunger to influence the agenda.

Affection.

The need to be part of a team and to be liked.

Plain Language Conferencing by Computer
PLEI.plain is an electronic conference (or bulletin board). It is one of 9 conferences making up the Public Legal Education and Information Network (PLEI.Net) sponsored by the Canadian Department of Justice.

Cheryl Stephens, editor of Rapport, is the moderator of PLEI.plain. She says, "This is another way we can keep in touch, internationally, with other plain language practitioners about important topics."

PLEI-Net is part of WEB Network which is affiliated with other international networks. Participants can carry on discussions from anywhere in the computer-literate world.

You can send mail, text files and spreadsheets to your plain language friends on the network. You can

• post news bulletins and report on your own activities
• discuss issues like access to justice, plain language, and the latest research.
• search for contacts, programs and projects.

A useful desk reference organized alphabetically for easy access to topics.

A Grammar Booklet for Lawyers or
How Not to Dangle Your Participles in Public (and Other Good Advice)
Constance Rooke
The Law Society of Upper Canada,
Toronto, Canada 1991

A useful compendium of the most common grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors and how to avoid them.

Better Writing for Lawyers
Timothy Perrin
The Law Society of Upper Canada,
Toronto, Canada 1990

An exploration of methods to overcome common writing problems by adopting a creative and process approach.

Clear & Effective Legal Writing
Veda R. Charrow & Myra K. Erhardt
Little, Brown and Company
Waltham, MA 1986

A textbook and manual for first year law that presents the Document Design Center's model for the writing process, guidelines for clear writing, specific advice and assignments.

Recommended References for considerate language
Gender-Neutral Language
The Nonsexist Word Finder: A
Dictionary of Gender-free Usage
by Rosalie Maggio
from Beacon Press

and, in the second edition,
The Bias-free Word Finder: A Dictionary

The Handbook of Nonsexist Writings: For Writers, Editors and Speakers
by Casey Miller and Kate Swift
from Harper & Row
Communicating Without Bias:
Guidelines for Government
by the Government Services Ministry
issued by the Province of B.C.

Multicultural Writing
Dictionary of Cautionary Words & Phrases
Multicultural Management Program,
University of Missouri Journalism School

Government Writing Style
Plain Language: Clear and Simple
Multiculturalism and Citizenship, 1991
Minister of Supply and Services, Canada
15 Eddy Street, Room 2E2
Hull, Quebec K1A 1K5

Writing in Government? Make it plain language.
Government of Alberta, 1991
Alberta Consumer and Corporate Affairs
20th Floor, 10025 Jasper Avenue
Edmonton, AB Canada T5J 3Z5

Writing in Plain English
Robert Eagleson
AGPS Press
Australian Government Publishing Service
GPO Box 84
Canberra, ACT 2601

Plain Language for Lawyers
Michelle M. Asprey
The Federation Press, Sydney, Australia 1991
188 pages, including index and
"Plain Language Vocabulary"

Asprey is a solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, consultant to the Law Foundation Centre for Plain Legal Language at the University of Sydney Law School. She also has experience in the hurley-burley life of a large law office st ood her in good stead as audience research.

I can only rave about this book. I feel as though Asprey has been reading my mind. So, for an "independent" and "objective" opinion, I asked Rachel Hutton to review the book. Hutton is a law student, journalist and consultant to the B.C. Plain Language Institute. She replied:

"Michele Asprey presents an incredibly convincing and entertaining guide for clear writing in her book, Plain Language for Lawyers. Without preaching or scolding, and with lots of practical advice and concrete examples, Asprey's guide is a mo del of plain language, to the nuts-and-bolts of implementing plain language. She anticipates the readers' doubts and their needs by including a chapter on the minefield of legal interpretation, a plain language vocabulary, and a set of questions and answ ers about writing in plain language.

Plain Language for Lawyers is brief, easy-to-read, and thorough: the kind of guide every lawyer, legal assistant, judge, and law student will find worthwhile to pick up, and hard to put down."

When it comes to annual reports or marketing campaigns, most CEOs call the nearest document designers. They know that professional help is in order. And weeks, months, even years of planning, drafting, and revising generally ensue before the final publi cations roll off the presses.

Unfortunately, day-to-day customer communications, such as letters and forms, don't receive the same attention. Content experts, legal eagles, and computer programmers all have their say, to be sure. But their main concerns are technical accuracy, statu tory compliance, and system requirements. Often, the customer's need for clear communication is lost in the welter of detail.

Recently, however, some major corporations have seen how letters and forms that don't communicate clearly are costing them money along with their customers' good will. At Lincoln National Life Insurance Company, for example, the point hit home when a top executive submitted a health insurance claim to his own company and received a computer-generated form letter in response.

Not only was the letter replete with typos and misspellings, this 20-year insurance veteran couldn't figure out what the letter wanted from him. It seemed to be asking for more information. There were even some blanks to fill in. "Wait a minute! If I can't understand this, what about our customers?"

Demanding copies of similar letters, the dismayed executive found that, instead of a customer communication system, he was faced with systematic miscommunication. Once the shouting stopped, Lincoln National called on AIR's Document Design Center (DDC). Our mission: to develop a customer communication system that lived up to its name.

...Early meetings revealed that Lincoln National was generating customer service letters on as many as five different automated and manual systems across the country.

DDC first took a systems approach to Lincoln National's customer communications. We began with an extensive assessment of user needs, focusing on how improving Lincoln National's customer communications could also improve the performance and productivity of their workforce.

Among other things, we looked at how Lincoln National's systems operate, who uses them in-house and how, and who receives and uses the information they generate. To find where duplication and gaps existed, we mapped the flow of information, from the time a customer's claim arrived at Lincoln National until the company paid or otherwise resolved the claim.

Then, from more than 1,200 source letters, DDC created a standardized system of 200 computer-generated letters dealing with all aspects of health insurance claims and customer service.

We also developed an original guide to effective letter writing. Besides its primary use as a job aid for everyone who writes letters at Lincoln National, the guide was the basis for train-the-trainer sessions at Lincoln National's headquarters in Fort W ayne and Colorado Springs. Lincoln National currently features the guide as part of corporate training in effective business communication.

Besides computer-generated letters, customers are also baffled by pre-printed statements, invoices and forms. They know someone is trying to tell them something, but what? Do they owe money? How much? Where do they send it? When must it be there? Cust omers often must resort to calling the company to have the form explained.

A while back, DDC and AIR's Washington Research Center asked the readers of Modern Maturity to tell us about their experiences with reading and filling out troublesome forms -- all too familiar tasks for the magazine's audience of retirees.

The results of our study showed that, when it comes to confusing forms, only the IRS {U.S. Internal Revenue Service} beats out the medical profession.

Most of the responses concerned forms that people had to fill out before they could qualify for loans, rent homes, or claim insurance benefits. We expected those.

What we didn't expect was the large number of complaints about forms whose primary purpose is to convey information, not to ask for it. A major culprit is the "explanation of [health, Medicare, etc.] benefits" (EOB) form. This form purports to tell you how and why an insurance carrier did or did not pay your claim for health expenses.

If you've ever tried to decipher an EOB, you'll undoubtedly sympathize with this Modern Maturity reader:

With these forms, I never know my complete bill. Our doctor sends bills to [the insurance carrier], which sends money back to the doctor. We get a sheet with explanations that we can't decipher. Sometimes there are doctors' names that we ne ver heard of. How can we know if we're paying too much? Or getting too little?

Just this past week, I received 13, yes thirteen individual forms in one mailing!... Each one said "This is a duplicate." Now, that's a change because the ton of mail that I've had...from [the insurance carrier] has been reading "This is not a bill"!

The health insurance industry is more than aware of the problem. Increasingly, public and private carriers are stepping up their efforts to make sure that their explanations speak clearly.

Explaining the explanations!
Recently, DDC completely redesigned EOBs for Lincoln National Life Insurance Company and the Health Care Financing Administration, the federal agency that administers Medicare. In addition, DDC just finished a project for Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Maryland.

BCBS spent two years redesigning its Explanation of Health Benefits (EOHB). Even so, the company found that its subscribers still had trouble understanding the form. At that point, BCBS asked DDC to pinpoint the difficulties and recommend solutions.

First, we analyzed the form ourselves. Next we interviewed BCBS managers and ran focus groups with BCBS subscribers and claims administrators. In the process, we uncovered many problems with the form's content, organization, typography, and language...< P> The bottom line: Miscommunication is expensive. When a corporation either omits basic information from the customer's day-to-day communication or buries it within dense text, the phones in customer service start to ring, and that corporation now must sp end both time and money explaining their explanations.
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Forms Designer
The intelligent and elegant forms design software for the Macintosh computer

FormsDesigner revolutionises forms design. Developed by the Communication Research Institute of Australia and Techway Solutions, it brings you an intelligent design system which helps you to create professional forms that are easy for the for m filler to use.

FormsDesigner places expert typographic and layout principles, based on six years of forms design research, at your finger-tips. The research and knowledge built into FormsDesigner has already proved cost effective, and has led to improved customer relat ions in both large and small organizations.

The intelligent reflow works to readjust your layout as you insert or delete parts of the form. This powerful reflow is just one of the many features created by Techway Solutions' programmers to make designing and editing forms easy. It also ensures the layout will be clear for users of the form to follow, and will make the best use of the space available...

The intelligent toolbox gives you the power to create both simple and complex forms quickly and easily. All you have to do is insert the appropriate tool into an available position on the form. FormsDesigner tools are unique. When you use them to build your form, the tool is programmed to apply the best rules of layout and typography in that context...

Research on good forms design conducted by the Communications Research Institute of Australia is built into the software. Included in the package is the Guide to Good Forms -- a text book on effective forms design -- to help you achieve optimum results.< P>

This Conference spearheaded work amongst the bar to promote plain language, address literacy issues, and support public legal education. Its work with the Canadian Bankers Association produced the 1991 joint report on plain language and the 1992 report o n legal literacy.

Centre for Plain Legal Language
Sponsored by the Law Foundation of New South Wales and the University of Sydney, the Centre's work falls into three areas: drafting, training and research. Peter Butt is Director of the Centre; Malcolm Harrison, Executive Director;

Document Design Center
American Institutes for Research
3333 K Street N.W.
Washington, D.C. USA 20007

Legal Writing Institute

Plain Language Computer Conference
The Public Legal Education and Information Network, sponsored by the Department of Justice Canada, hosts a conference on plain language. PLEI.net provides an several conferences and e-mail for practitioners in public legal education.

The Canadian contact for PLEI.net is the

Legal Resource Centre, Faculty of Extension,
University of Alberta, 10049 - 81 Avenue,
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada T6E 1W7,
telephone (403) 492-5732 or fax (403) 492-6180.