Plain Language Movement

The Plain Language Movement is an effort to eliminate unnecessarily complex language from academia, government, law, and business.

International and national organizations in the movement include:

  • Plain Language Association International (PLAIN) was formed in 1993 as the Plain Language Network. Its membership is international; it was incorporated as a non-profit organization in Canada in 2008.
  • Clarity is an international association promoting plain legal language. The organization publishes a journal.
  • The Plain Language Information and Action Network (also known as PLAIN) is a group of volunteer US federal employees working to improve communications from the federal government to the public.
  • The Center for Plain Language is a US-based nonprofit organization promoting the use of plain language in the public and private sectors. The organization hosts annual symposia in Washington DC. The Center also gives ClearMark Awards to outstanding examples of clear communication, and WonderMark awards to examples of truly bad communication.

Organizations that have endorsed plain language include the Legal Writing Institute, the Canadian Bar Association, and the Canadian Bankers Association.

Read more about Plain Language Movement:  Aims, The Plain Writing Act of 2010

Famous quotes containing the words plain, language and/or movement:

    “There is a plain distinction to be made betwixt pleasure and happiness. For tho’ there can be no happiness without pleasure—yet the converse of the proposition will not hold true.—We are so made, that from the common gratifications of our appetites, and the impressions of a thousand objects, we snatch the one, like a transient gleam, without being suffered to taste the other.”
    —Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)

    “For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “I am a writer and a feminist, and the two seem to be constantly in conflict.... ever since I became loosely involved with it, it has seemed to me one of the recurring ironies of this movement that there is no way to tell the truth about it without, in some small way, seeming to hurt it.”
    —Nora Ephron (b. 1941)