Where plain-language rules and policy came from
The rules for plain English and the policies that made plain language binding have authors and dates: a compact set of rules for writers from 1946, campaigns against official gobbledygook, court orders and statutes in the UK and the USA, movements elsewhere in Europe, and an international standard published in 2023.
Orwell's six rules for writers
George Orwell, best known as the author of 1984, formulated a much-quoted, compact set of rules for clear writing in 1946. His six rules for writers, an attempt to help authors write clear English, are rules "one can rely on when instinct fails":
- Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
The Oxford Guide to Plain English, by the plain-language campaigner Martin Cutts, reproduces the rules in its introduction.
Orwell's rules were not written with registration documentation for drugs and medical devices, or with medical communications, in mind, nor by a writer bound by tight and often unrealistic deadlines with a boss or client pressing him. His writing was principally in the humanities and consisted largely of novels, essays and journal contributions.
Campaigns, court orders and statutes
Plain language has been advocated across several decades and disciplines, and tangible outcomes of that advocacy began to emerge toward the end of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first. In 1977 the New York Times published an article, "The Plain Language Movement is Gaining", which reported that attempts to simplify legal language dated as far back as Thomas Jefferson, the third US president. By then, with the growth of consumerism, an accelerated movement for plain language had gained momentum, resulting, for example, in a New York state law that required clear and understandable language in contracts such as apartment leases and loan agreements. The article also warned that the path to simplification is hazardous because the standard of simplicity had not been defined, and critics of plain language at the time believed that complex ideas could not always be expressed in simple language. Critics of plain language still existed in 2018, but they were more outnumbered than ever before.
The failure of professionals to write in a way that ordinary people can understand led to campaigning organisations such as Plain English Campaign, which by 2015 had spent 35 years fighting "gobbledygook, jargon and misleading public information". That failure also forced governments to adopt firm measures. In 1999 the UK Lord Chancellor ordered the civil courts to replace archaic terms with plain-language alternatives, so that plaintiff was replaced with claimant and interrogatories with requests for information. The United States went one step further with the Plain Writing Act of 2010, which requires that all documents issued by federal agencies be in plain language.
Several institutions and associations dedicate themselves to plain language, among them the Center for Plain Language, Plain Language Association International and the Plain Language Action and Information Network (PLAIN). PLAIN is a group of US federal employees dedicated to promoting plain English in government communication, and its homepage proclaims "Plain Language – It's the Law".
Movements beyond the UK and the USA
Plain language is often used as a synonym for plain English, but countries outside the English-speaking world have similar movements. The Institute for Language and Folklore in Sweden campaigns to promote klarspråk (plain language) in Swedish companies, organisations, universities and county authorities, and in 2009 the Norwegian government launched its own klarspråk project to make documents created for its citizens easier to read. In 1998 English translators at the European Commission wrote Fight the Fog, a publication of simple suggestions to "put the reader first". In the same year Dave Skinner of the European Commission's Translation Service published a poem titled Clarity, which muses that transparency is frequently talked about while opacity proliferates, when what is needed is clarity, "abandoning obscurity / And preferring more simplicity", and advises: "Write English as it ought to be".
The ISO standard for plain language
In 2023, after many years of development, discussion and alignment, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published a standard for plain language, ISO 24495-1; one account of its making dates the publication to July 2023 in one place and to June 2023 in another. The standard was developed and agreed upon internationally, by plain-language practitioners, linguists, technical writers, designers and text creators from many countries, and it applies to most written languages and reflects the most recent research on plain language and the experience of plain-language experts.
Who first came up with the idea of a universal definition of plain language and a standard across regions, and when and where, is difficult to determine. All the definitional and alignment work in the field has been done by volunteers who are enthusiastic plain-language practitioners and advocates. The initiative for a standard had no institutional support from academia and no monetary support from governments, although some Northern European countries, such as Norway, supported the cause by sending official delegates. The standard was developed by people prepared to spend many evenings and weekends discussing ideas and fine-tuning text proposals. Developing a definition in a community of practitioners and aligning it internationally is difficult enough, and getting a standard developed and adopted by ISO is more challenging still.
How ISO develops a standard
ISO does not prompt the development of a standard. Someone, usually industry or another group of practitioners, approaches a national member organisation of ISO, which, if it sees value in the proposal, brings it into ISO's system of expert groups. The expert groups, organised in technical committees of which ISO has about 250, negotiate and align on all aspects of the standard. Experts representing national standards bodies have to be nominated by their country's committee to work in an ISO working group. The strength of the process rests on its global scope, its representation of developing countries and consumer groups, and its principle of consensus, which ensures that all comments of all stakeholders are considered.
From a definition to an approved project
Some 16 years separate the first public appearances of the idea of a plain-language standard, in 2007, from the release of the ISO standard in 2023. The first seven years, until 2014, were spent developing and discussing a definition of plain language, which the International Plain Language Federation (IPLF) formally adopted in 2014. In 2017 the IPLF set up a committee to develop a plain-language standard. A small group from the IPLF, led by Christopher Balmford, a lawyer by training, approached Standards Australia: he cold-called the relevant person, met him, and with his enthusiasm overcame the initially profound scepticism and convinced Standards Australia to take up the topic, his cause apparently greatly helped by his mentioning in passing that he and a friend had paddled a sea kayak the 150 miles from mainland Australia to Tasmania, island-hopping on a 16-day trip. Standards Australia quickly realised that a plain-language standard would be more effectively developed internationally than nationally and proposed the project to ISO, and in 2019 ISO Technical Committee 37 (Language and Terminology) approved the initiative, which meant the standard could be developed in alignment with all 35 national standards organisations that are members of the committee.
Drafting the standard
TC 37 set up a working group, WG 11, to do the groundwork. WG 11 appointed a drafting committee of eight members to do the initial writing of the many drafts and discuss the feedback from the national standards committees and from professional organisations such as Clarity, the Center for Plain Language, Plain Language Association International, the International Institute for Information Design and the European Parliament. The drafting committee's proposals were then discussed and decided in WG 11, which comprised the delegates of the national standards bodies that had decided to become involved and usually had some 30 delegates from 18 countries, from every continent except Antarctica, representing about 20 languages. Balmford was appointed convenor, tasked with leading the development and ensuring that ISO's principles, such as fairness, freedom of speech, equality and consensus in all decisions, were followed. The convenor's task was to ensure that everybody was heard, that every contribution was discussed and that a solution was found to which everybody could agree, in line with ISO's consensus principle, and the role was also administrative: calling the meetings and, very often, writing the minutes.
The drafting committee did the majority of the conceptual work, and during its many intense phases it often met several times a week. Over some four years there were many intense phases, particularly when revised drafts were due and when comments on drafts had to be evaluated; often several hundred comments had to be read, discussed and decided upon, and each one had to be answered in writing. Balmford, located in Australia, chaired meetings that started at 11 PM and often continued until 1 AM to accommodate the time zones of experts around the globe. The drafting committee's composition changed over time, and its members over extended periods were Annetta Cheek (USA), Vera Gergely (Hungary), Angelika Vaasa (Belgium), David Lipscomb (USA), Susan Kleimann (USA), Torunn Reksten (Norway), Machiko Asai (Japan), Rosa Margarita Galán Vélez (Mexico) and Andreas Baumert (Germany), with editing handled by Gael Spivak (Canada); many of them are involved in one of the plain-language organisations. Good leadership was of great importance, but the standard was developed successfully because of the collaborative, inclusive, sharing attitude of the drafting committee and WG 11, in a process based on respect and equality.
Approval, localisation and revision
Before publication the standard had to pass several steps of approval and discussion in ISO, one of them approval by TC 37, and in preparation for the final vote every national standards body represented in TC 37 was given the opportunity to review and comment on the final draft, which alone took several months because the bodies needed enough time for their review. In 2024, national standards bodies and their committees were working on localising the standard to their language and territory, and the IPLF offered a guideline and a checklist for practitioners who want to engage in its adoption by their national standards body, as well as a detailed list of frequently asked questions about it. Two initiatives building on part 1 were under way to expand the standard into legal writing and drafting and into science writing (ISO/AWI 24495-3, Plain Language — Part 3: Science Writing), and because ISO re-evaluates every standard at five-year intervals, preparations for the next update had already begun. By 2024 Balmford had stepped down, and Angelika Vaasa, from the European Parliament, had been appointed convenor.