Plain Language Around the World
A consumer-driven movements spreads worldwide.
‘A consumer’ refers to a client or a reader or an audience. ‘movement’, here, means groups or a large number of people. In other words, plain language spreads worldwide to satisfy the needs of a large number of people. Plain language was introduced to address the demand of the clients or for the sake of the consumers or readers. It was the movement of writing documents in clear, straightforward, precise language with the common words of everyday speech.
Plain language began in the 1970s as a part of the consumer movement, when various corporations were promoted to explore the benefits of plain language in their consumer documents. Its growth coincided with an era of demystification of professions. It was a time of increasing interest by linguists, and others in the process of communication. but even so, plain language soon entered the mainstream of business and the law, quickly gaining legitimacy as lawyers and clients begin to understand its advantages.
Beginnings – banking, insurance and the 1970s
The origin of plain language is United States. It takes birth with the act of simplifying consumer loan note launched on 1 January 1975 by first National City Bank (Citibank). In 1973 Citibank made the decision to move to plain language because it had become worried by large numbers of suits against consumers it had to run to collecting its debts.
Plain language initiative was praised by clients, consumer advocates, politicians, and judges. Citibank also noticed a substantial reduction in the number of suits the bank brought against consumers. Citibank acted voluntarily to rewrite its loan note but legislation to require certain documents to be written in plain language was not far off.
In 1975, the Magnuson-Moss consumer product warranty act was passed by Congress. It stated that warranties must be written in ‘simple and readily understood language’. Soon, US insurance companies such as Sentry Insurance, St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance company and Aetna Life and Casualty started thinking about simplifying a wide range of insurance policies even though the Magnuson-Moss Act did not specifically apply to insurance policies. Other plain language laws would soon follow.
Australia: here, too, insurance companies were among the first corporation to move to plain language. NRMA insurance introduced its ‘plain English’ car insurance policy in September 1976 and ‘Plain English’ versions of all the other NRMA insurance policies were introduced over the next five years. Other insurance companies such as NZ I and AMP soon followed NRMA insurance.
Canada: the insurance and banking industries were at the forefront of the move to plain language in Canada as well. In 1979, the Bank of Nova Scotia worked with lawyers Robert Dick to redesign and rewrite its loan forms. At the same time, Royal insurance of Canada had produced a plain language insurance policy.
But even before this, 1976, the Canadian legislative Drafting Conventions had been produced and sanctioned by the Uniform law conference of Canada. These conventions adopted many of the principles of plain language drafting.
United Kingdom: in 1979, Chrissie Maher and Martin Cutts founded the plain English campaign. It had its origins in a consumer advice center Maher and Cutts had set up three years earlier in Salford, near Manchester.
During the 1980s, the Plain English Campaign worked with the National Consumer Council to review thousands of government forms that were badly worded and poorly designed. the National Consumer Council published several booklets on plain language writing, including Gobbledegook (1980) Plain Words for consumers (1984), Plain English for Lawyers (1984), Making Good Solicitors (1989) and Plain Language – Plain Law (1990).
Sweden: in 1996, the Swedish government appointed a linguist to the Cabinet Office. His task was to modernize legal language in laws and ordinances. Since 1980, there has been a team of language experts who revise written material before it reaches parliament, prepare writing guidelines, and run training courses.
In fact, Sweden was way ahead of the rest of the world in plain language. it was as early as 1713 that King Charles XII dictated this ordinance:
His majesty the king requires that the Royal Chancellery in all written documents endeavor to write in clear, plain Swedish and not to use, as far as possible, foreign words.
The US plain language laws
In 1969, President Nixon had ordered that the daily government journal, the Federal Register, be written in language which is ‘readily understandable by the layman’. almost one decade later, in 1978, President Carter issued an order that ‘regulations should be as simple and clear as possible’. He followed this up in 1979 with an order that ‘government forms should be as short as possible and should elicit information in a simple straightforward fashion.
In 1978 the state of New York introduced its plain language law known as Sullivan law which required that all residential lease in consumer contracts be written in understandable language. The exact requirement is that they have to be ‘written in a clear and coherent manner using words with common and everyday meanings’. It applies to agreements involving amounts of $50,000 or less primarily for personal and family or household purposes.
Since then, ten other U.S. states have passed laws that require either plain, clear, conspicuous, accurate or understandable language to be used in certain consumer transactions. Many other state and federal laws and regulations govern the language to be used in a variety of documents including life insurance policies, ballots, and utility bills. some use the Flesch Reading Ease Test to measure readability.
In 2009 there were two plain language bills in Congress: one in the Senate and one in the House of Representatives. At the time of writing, neither had passed both houses but the legislative process was still alive, and a vote was possible early in 2010.
The Law Commission in committee reports
Several Law Commission and committee reports proved to be catalysts for much of the progress made in plain language.
United Kingdom: in the early 1970s, the Renton Committee was appointed to investigate and report to Parliament on the process of formulating statutes. On 7 May 1975 the Renton Report was published. it highlighted examples of convoluted drafting in British statutes and recommended improving the explanatory materials that accompany statutes. This report provoked discussion, but it would not begin to bear fruit until the late 1990s, when two major projects began in the UK. one was the project to rewrite UK tax laws. The other was the review of the format of UK legislation with the introduction of explanatory notes in 1998 and the new legislative format in 2001.
in addition, the report of Lord justice Woolf called Access to Justice was commissioned in 1994, published in 1996 and led to the reform of the Civil Procedure rules which came into effect in 1999.
New Zealand: The New Zealand Law Commission has a brief to “propose ways of making legislation as understandable and accessible as practicable and off ensuring that it is kept on the review in a systematic way’. it must also ascertain what changes, if any are necessary or desirable in the law relating to the interpretation of legislation.
In report no.17, issued in December 1990, the Commission made suggestions for improving the form and style of laws and prepared a Draft Interpretation Act. The Act’s subtitle was its purpose ‘to avoid prolixity and Tautology’. in 1993 the Commission published report no. 27 called The Format of Legislation in which it recommended changes to the design and typography of legislation. Report no. 37 from 1996, is called Legislation Manual, Structure and Style. It gives guidelines for drafting legislation and recommends plain language principles. these reports paved the way for the now completed simplification of New Zealand 's tax laws.
The Law Commission constitutes to work in this area, producing two more reports on statute law, in 2008 and 2009.
Australia: one of the major catalysts for plain language in the law in Australia was the Victorian Law Reform Commission’s report, called Plain English and the Law published in June 1987. That report made 15 recommendations and included a drafting manual, which it recommended be adopted as the official drafting guide for government departments and agencies for Acts, regulations forms and explanatory material. The report and manual remain influential over 20 years later and have led to many reforms in the language of the law.
Canada: in 1988, the Justice Reform Committee of British Columbia issued a report called Access to Justice. It recommended establishing a plain language committee to develop a strategy for introducing plain language into the justice system. then in 1990, the Canadian Bar Association and the Canadian Bankers’ Association issued a report called The Decline and the Fall of Gobbledygook: Report on Plain Language Documentation. it recommended ways to promote the use of plain language in the legal profession and in banking. the Canadian Bar Association adopted these recommendations by resolution in 1991, urging banks to draft their documents in plain language. ironically the first word of the resolution was ‘whereas’. the report in the resolution continues to have effect in Canada, with the banks resolving in 2000 to move towards plain language in mortgage documents.
Ireland: The Irish Law Reform Commission called for plain language in legislation in its report Statutory Drafting and Interpretation: Plain language and the law published in December 2000. the Commission recommended:
A comprehensive program of plain language reform in Irish statute law. in this regard we support the initiatives currently being undertaken by the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel to the Government and the Statute Law Revision Unit.
One of the initiatives of the Office of Parliamentary Counsel was the Legislative Drafting Manual prepared for drafters in that office. It was published in November 2001 and advocates plain language principles in so far as that is possible without giving rise to ambiguity.
Government departments and agencies
United Kingdom: the UK government adopted a plain language policy for government forms in 1982. many thousands of forms were revised, redesigned, or abandoned altogether. in 1994 the Secretary of State for Wales announced a program to simplify and reduce number of government forms and circulars. Since then, simplification has occurred in local government, small business, the arts, the Ombudsman's service and other areas. Probably the major effort though has been the UK tax law rewrite, undertaken by HM Revenue and Customs.
United States: orders of President Nixon and Carter were early sign of a move to plain language in U.S. government. Another encouraging development in plain language came on 1 June 1998 when President Clinton issued his Executive Memorandum on plain language. this was sent to the heads of executive departments and agencies directing them to:
a. by Oct. 1, 1991, use plain language in all new documents, other than regulations, that explain how to obtain a benefit or service or how to comply with a requirement you administer or enforce. For example, these documents may include letters, notices, and instructions. By Jan 1, 2002, all such documents created prior to Oct. 1, 1998, must also be in plain language.
b. By Jan 1, 1990, use plain language in all proposed and final rulemaking documents published in the Federal Register, unless you proposed the rule before that date. You should also consider rewriting existing regulations in plain language when you have the opportunity and resources to do so.
Long after the end of the Clinton administration, there is still US government support for this initiative. A volunteer group of federal government employees began meeting in the mid-1990s and formed what became ‘PLAIN’ – the plain Language Action and Information Network. PLAIN works to improve communication from the federal government to the public. PLAIN has an informative website www.plainlanguage.gov, still holds monthly meetings, and also presents workshops and seminars. Membership of PLAIN is open to non-federal government employees as well.
US secretariat and Exchange Commission: a great leap forward for plain language came in January 1998 when the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced new rules calling for plain language in prospectuses. These rules applied to the prospectus that a public company or a mutual fund must give to prospective inventors in their securities. Help for companies trying to comply with these rules is in the SEC’s Plain English Handbook which is available in print and online. In recent years the SEC has continued its plain language efforts in the areas of mutual fund disclosure and executive fund disclosure, and it has ambitious plans to overhaul its forms-based disclosure system, replacing it with an online system
Other U.S. government departments and agencies using and working in plain language include the Federal Aviation Administration, the office of the Federal Register, the Food and Drug Administration, Health and Human Sciences, the National Institute of Health, the Social Security Administration end the Veteran’s Benefits Administration.
Canada: The Communications Policy of the Government of Canada has always had a plain language document. It says, in part:
To ensure clarity and consistency of information, plain language and proper grammar must be used in all communication with the public. This principle also applies to internal communication as well as to information prepared for parliament or any other official body, whether delivered in writing or in speech.
Various provincial and federal government officials and agencies, including the Office of the Auditor General of Alberta, Alberta agriculture, Food and Rural Development and the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency have redesigned and rewritten various forms and other documents in plain language. And the Canadian Public Health Association established a Plain Language Service in 1997. It offers assessment, revision, editing, design and translation services for the public, private and voluntary sectors.
Australia: federal and state government departments have been working towards plain language since at least 1983, when Australian government launched its ‘Plain English and Simpler Forms’ program. Much work was done by the Department of Administrative Services to produce model documents and guides to better, simpler writing.
Tax Law Rewrite Projects
In the 1990s, three major projects were launched in three different countries, all with the aim of improving existing tax laws.
Australia: The tax Law Improvement Project (TLIP) was established in 1993 to restructure, renumber and rewrite the existing Income Tax Assessment Act 1936. The TLIP team produced three substantial installments of rewritten law dealing with the poor provision of tax law in some specific areas such as capital gains tax. These were enacted in the income Tax Assessment Act 1997. But after a change of government, priorities shifted to tax policy reform and the introduction of, among other things, the Goods and Services Tax. So, by 1999 the resources and expertise of the TLIP had been reallocated to the new tax reform effort. It is not correct to assert, as Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey Palmer did in a speech to the New Zealand Law Commission, that the project was so difficult that Australia gave up on it.
Since then, some further sections of the Old Act have been rewritten and placed in the 1997 Act. Those rewrites and other ‘stand-alone’ tax legislation resulting from the continuing tax reform process, continue to use the new style and many of the features developed by the TLIP.
New Zealand: in 1994, New Zealand undertook what was to be a five-year project to review and simplify its tax laws. The first part of the rewrite process involved reorganizing the structure of the Income Tax Act 1976, so that it is more logical and accessible. That resulted in the Income Tax Act 1994. The next stage involved rewriting ‘core provisions’ of the old Tax Act. That became law in 1996 with effect from 1997 to 1998 tax year.
The huge Income Tax Act 2007 was passed into law in October 2007, completing the historic rewrite. the NZ Inland Revenue described the rewrite as designed to produce ‘income tax law that is clear, written in plain language and is structurally consistent’.
United Kingdom: On 28 November 1995, that sounds a lot of the next sequel announced of five-year project to rewrite the existing direct tax legislation. The stated aim for the project was ‘to rewrite the United kingdom’s primary direct tax legislation to make it clearer and easier to use, without sending the law. The five-year project is now in its 13th year but will close down in 2010.
At the time of writing the project had produced the following rewritten law:
· Capital Allowances Act 2001
· Income Tax (Earning and Pensions) Act 2003
· Income Tax Regulations 2003
· Income Tax Act 2005
· Income Tax Act 2007
· Corporation Tax Act 2009
