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Program Details

In Plain English

The Plain Language movement began in the mid-1990s with a group of mostly federal employees who were dedicated to the idea that citizens deserve clear communications from government. Since then, it has been adapted to organizations of all kinds that want their clients and customers to understand their information more easily. 

Class activities focus on revising documents to:

• Meet the needs of their audience.
• Use short sentences, personal pronouns and familiar words.
• Avoid redundancy, jargon, negative words and wordiness.
• Use strong verbs and active voice.
• Keep lists parallel.
• Use organization, design, and layout that increase comprehension.

Participants learn to recognize the “businessese” that passes for writing, and begin to substitute clearer language that is tailored to their audiences. Plain language creates goodwill with both internal and external clients because it is quicker to read and easier to understand. (Placement in I.P.E. takes a score of 85% or above on the Business Writing Basics pretest, or completion of the Basics class.)

Ten 2-hour sessions or five half-day sessions

 Core Competencies for In Plain English

• Identifying the needs and capacities of the audience
• Knowing the message and best way to organize it
• Understanding readability and how to achieve it by revising text to use:
  short sentences
  personal pronouns (you, we)
  concrete, familiar words
  strong verbs with active voice
  parallel lists
  positive instead of negative words
  
• Avoiding repetition and surplus words
  
• Avoiding legal jargon and “businessese”
  
• Presenting complex information with tables and charts
• Increasing comprehension through organization, design and layout