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:

    “Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet;
    In short, my deary, kiss me and be quiet.”
    —Mary Wortley, Lady Montagu (1689–1762)

    “Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past.”
    —Octavio Paz (b. 1914)

    “Our movement took a grip on cowardly Marxism and from it extracted the meaning of socialism. It also took from the cowardly middle-class parties their nationalism. Throwing both into the cauldron of our way of life there emerged, as clear as a crystal, the synthesis—German National Socialism.”
    —Hermann Goering (1893–1946)