Talk:Plain English

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[edit] How is the Gettysburg Address Plain English

The article mentions the Gettysburg Address as Plain English....as far as I can tell, it's quite the opposite. Original: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Plain: "Eighty seven years ago our fathers created a country built on liberty and the principle, 'All men are created equal.'"

And it goes on...can I remove it? Thanks. TrevorRC 10:55, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WHY IS PLAIN ENGLISH WIKIPEDIA NOT MENTIONED HERE......

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page


We need to better explain Plain English here. The page seems to be in its early stages. Plain English, thoroughly understood, is not controversial. That's like saying Strunk and White is controversial, when in fact it's extremely well accepted. I think controversy comes from misunderstanding Plain English as "dumbing down," or "see spot run," when in fact Plain English can apply to complex sentences, gracefully built to convey information efficiently. I'll devote some time over the next week to expanding the definition of Plain English in this article.

I am surprised to find there is nothing here to justify the neutrality dispute. I raised this article because it seemed to me silly to have an article for Plain English Campaign but not for Plain English itself. The stub may or may not be excessively POV but I think it would be appropriate for the disputed status to be justified in some way.

'Alan'


The article seems to be overly praising of Plain English. Even if it is truthful, it does sound like it is biased. Compare with others: Simple English Special English. They seem more balanced.

This article is too biased towards the "revolution". Not enough for an NPOV tag, but please tone it down. — Omegatron 04:07, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's that NPOV. As a fan of... Complex English(?), I find this article extremely dull, dreary and unremarkable. The reading of this article itself seems a fine criticism of the concept. :-P Preston 03:08, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What is this?

After reading the article, I can't tell what Plain English is. Is it a system regulated by an agency, like Special English and Simplified English? Is it a consensus of some set of people (who don't have a representing organization)? Is it a term used to describe writing which follows Strunk and White? I have no idea. -Piquan 22:45, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

It's basically a vaguely defined principle and a writing style that follows that principle. A similar principle in engineering is the KISS principle. --Coolcaesar 06:16, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Maybe we should add something like that to the article. Give the reader some context like that. Anybody want to take a crack at it? -- Piquan 09:28, 29 January 2006 (UTC)


[edit] History

The second paragraph seemed to talk more about English grammar. Maybe lose this paragraph or rewrite how Latin influence such a complicated writing style? --Editrek 13:10, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

The sentence "As long as a writer's meaning is clear and the tone is appropriate for the audience, there is no reason whatsoever, real or imagined, to follow these "rules" that never were (no matter what your teacher told you when you were 13)." could be rewritten as "As long as a writer's meaning is clear and the tone is appropriate for the audience, there is no reason whatsoever to follow these "rules". It doesn't matter whether you put a grade level or age of a student. In international context, some countries have different starting school age and putting an age doesn't mean anything. It may be a suitable context for US audience that those grammar rules are taught at that grade or age, but its meaning might be lost to a global audience. --Editrek 09:23, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

That's fine with me, Editrek. tunes 16:05, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

This paragraph:

Plain English, also known as Plain Language, is sometimes misunderstood as a "dumbed down" version of writing. A good metaphor to explain why this is not so is engineering. A good engineering design has all the elements needed to fulfill the function, but not more. It accomplishes its task with beautiful efficiency, otherwise known as style or grace. A sentence written using Plain English can be beautiful, but it must not have extra, irrelevant things hanging off of it. It shouldn't be confusing or pompous. Everything in the sentence should work toward communicating to the reader what the writer intended. Everything else should be deleted or streamlined. Plain English is efficient but not brutally so. It is in fact an act of kindness to the reader, sparing them from confusion and from having to read unnecessary words. The resulting refinement makes the words on the page transparent, so the reader can see straight through them to the meaning the writer intended.

  • Made "dumbed down" a wiki link. Some people might not understand what it means especially those from non-English speaking background.
  • I have split the paragraph into two - trying to limit one idea to one paragraph. Limit the repetiton start of a sentence, "A good...", to one sentence.
  • Remove "...hanging off of it." A bit hard to read aloud - might not be good for speech synthesiser.
  • Change contraction "shouldn't" to should not - comply with Wikipedia Manual of Style on contractions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Contractions
  • Change to "In fact, it is..." gives more emphasis.

I still have a problem with the last sentence, "The resulting refinement...", but not sure how to go about making it with fewer words without losing its "punch". --Editrek 22:56, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inconsistency

I'm a linguistics student who came to find out what the philosophy behind the 'Plain English' movement is and found a mess. This articles is horribly POV, I tried to correct some bits, but I don't know enough about this 'movement,' to contribute much more. But, more importantly, I don't understand why this article suggests that Plain English advocates an abandonment of arbitrary prescriptive rules, but then goes on to cite Orwell and Strunk, two of English's most notorious prescriptivists, without any discussion of this apparent conflict.