How to Write in Plain English

• It’s not ‘cat sat on the mat or ‘Peter and Jane’ writing. Almost anything – from leaflets and letters to legal documents – can be written in plain English without being patronising or over-simple.
• It doesn’t mean reducing the length or changing the meaning of your message….
• It’s not about banning new words, killing off long words or promoting completely perfect grammar. Nor is it about letting grammar slip.
• It is not an amateur’s method of communication. Most forward-looking senior managers always write in plain English.
• And finally, it is not as easy as we would like to think.

—How to Write in Plain EnglishPlain English Campaign)

According to the Plain English Campaign, Dec. 5 is “Plain English Day.” The Plain English Campaign led me to www.anadrom.net, which includes the following mission statement: “Please browse the site to see our full range of services, we can remain customer focused and goal-directed, innovate and be an inside-out organization which facilitates sticky web-readiness transforming turnkey eyeballs to brand 24/365 paradigms with benchmark turnkey channels implementing viral e-services and dot-com action-items while we take that action item off-line and raise a red flag and remember touch base as you think about the red tape outside of the box and seize B2B e-tailers and re-envisioneer innovative partnerships that evolve dot-com initiatives delivering synergistic earballs to incentivize. ” What’s even worse — I got nothing when I went to the site. Google’s cache of anadrom brings up a very slow page with an animated intro that reveals a small inset window; the mission statement is buried so that you have to click a scroll button to read it.