Read Plain Words for Free Online Page B

law in order to be precise are less than readily intelligible, how is the ordinary person to be helped to understand it?
    No doubt much can be done by selection and arrangement, even though the words used are those of the Act. But the official finds it more and more difficult to give helpful explanations other than by departing from them. And something even more than that is needed to carry out the exhortation given by a President of the Board of Trade to his staff: ‘Let us get away entirely from the chilly formalities of the old-style correspondence which seemed to come from some granite monolith rather than from another human being’. The old rule is indeed yielding to the pressure of events. A new technique is being developed for those pamphlets and leaflets that are necessary to explain the law to the public in such matters as PAYE and National Insurance. Its guiding principles are to use the simplest language and avoid technical terms; to employ the second person freely; not to try to give all the details of the law relevant to the subject but to be
content with stating the essentials; to explain, if these are stated in the writer’s words and not the words of the Act, that they are an approximation only; to tell members of the public where they can find fuller information and further advice; and always to make sure that people know their rights of appeal. This technique is being closely studied, in the departments concerned, by experts who have nothing to learn from me.
    But there is another part of this subject: the answering of letters from correspondents about their own cases. These answers cannot be written, like pamphlets and leaflets, by people who are experts both in the subject matter and in English composition, and here I shall have some advice to give. A letter of this kind needs in some respects a special technique, but the principles of this technique are the same as those of all good writing, whatever its purpose. We have here in its most elementary form—though not on that account its least difficult—the problem of writing what one means and affecting one’s reader precisely as one wishes. If therefore we begin our study of the problem of official English by examining the technique of this part of it, that will serve as a good introduction to the rest of the book, for it will bring out most of the points that we shall have to study more closely later. It is in this field of an official’s duties more than any other that good English can be defined simply as English that is readily understood by the reader. To be clear is to be efficient. To be obscure is to be inefficient. Your style of letter-writing is to be judged not by literary conventions or grammatical niceties but by whether it carries out efficiently the job you have been paid to do.
    This ‘efficiency’ must be broadly interpreted. It connotes a proper attitude of mind towards your correspondents. They may not care about being addressed in literary English, but they will care very much about being treated with sympathy and
understanding. It is not easy nowadays to remember anything so contrary to all appearances as that officials are the servants of the public; but they are, and no official should foster the illusion that it is the other way round. So your style must not only be simple, but also friendly, sympathetic and natural, appropriate to one who is a servant, not a master.
    Let us now translate these generalities into some practical rules.
    (1) Be sure you know what your correspondent is asking before you begin to draft your reply. Study the letter in front of you carefully. If the writing is obscure, spare no trouble in trying to get at its meaning. If you conclude that the person who wrote it meant something different from what is actually on the page (as it may well prove) address yourself to the meaning and not to the words, and do not be clever at your correspondent’s expense. Adapt the atmosphere of your reply to suit