Plain English (sometimes referred to more broadly as plain language) is a generic term for communication in English that emphasizes clarity, brevity, and the avoidance of technical language—particularly in relation to official government or business communication.
The goal is to write in a way that is easily understood by the target audience: clear and straightforward, appropriate to their reading skills and knowledge, free of wordiness, cliché and needless jargon. It often involves using native Germanic words instead of those derived from Latin and Greek (see linguistic purism in English).
Famous quotes containing the words plain and/or english:
“I don’t choose to say much upon this head,
I’m a plain man, and in a single station,
But—Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,
Inform us truly, have they not hen-peck’d you all?”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)