Plain English Campaign
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The Plain English Campaign is a pressure group based in the United Kingdom. It encourages organisations to use simple, understandable language for public information, which can include contracts, terms and conditions and bills. Plain English is defined as "language that the intended audience can understand and act upon from a single reading".
They provide a document certification service to organisations, which allows the organisation to use the widely-recognised crystal mark on the document to certify that it is written in plain English. They make use of the word gobbledygook to refer to the kind of tortuous and confusing English they are campaigning against, and every year a Golden Bull award is made for the worst example. There is also a Foot in Mouth award for "a baffling quote [sic] by a public figure".
In 2003 it drew widespread criticism when it gave its Foot In Mouth award to the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, for this statement: "Reports that say something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know". The campaign commented: "We think we know what he means. But we don’t know if we really know".
Journalists and academics soon leapt to Rumsfeld's defence, saying that he was talking sense, moreover sense expressed in the simplest words available, ones that the Plain English Campaign should have been applauding, not criticising. Mr Rumsfeld's statement might need work to appreciate, because he was talking philosophy. As one commentator said "perhaps the campaign only believes in plain thinking".
Many legal and governmental organisations in the UK now use plain English in their public documents. The language used often resembles special English and has been criticised as over-simplified. This points to the challenge facing those who communicate with the public: how to get their ideas across in plain language without losing force or precision.
