Talk:Plain English

We need to better explain Plain English here. The page seems to be in its early stages. Plain English, thoroughly understood, is not controversial. That's like saying Strunk and White is controversial, when in fact it's extremely well accepted. I think controversy comes from misunderstanding Plain English as "dumbing down," or "see spot run," when in fact Plain English can apply to complex sentences, gracefully built to convey information efficiently. I'll devote some time over the next week to expanding the definition of Plain English in this article.

I am surprised to find there is nothing here to justify the neutrality dispute. I raised this article because it seemed to me silly to have an article for Plain English Campaign but not for Plain English itself. The stub may or may not be excessively POV but I think it would be appropriate for the disputed status to be justified in some way.

'Alan'

The article seems to be overly praising of Plain English. Even if it is truthful, it does sound like it is biased. Compare with others: Simple English Special English. They seem more balanced.

This article is too biased towards the "revolution". Not enough for an NPOV tag, but please tone it down. — Omegatron 04:07, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's that NPOV. As a fan of... Complex English(?), I find this article extremely dull, dreary and unremarkable. The reading of this article itself seems a fine criticism of the concept. :-P Preston 03:08, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What is this?

After reading the article, I can't tell what Plain English is. Is it a system regulated by an agency, like Special English and Simplified English? Is it a consensus of some set of people (who don't have a representing organization)? Is it a term used to describe writing which follows Strunk and White? I have no idea. -Piquan 22:45, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's basically a vaguely defined principle and a writing style that follows that principle. A similar principle in engineering is the KISS principle. --Coolcaesar 06:16, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we should add something like that to the article. Give the reader some context like that. Anybody want to take a crack at it? -- Piquan 09:28, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

History

The second paragraph seemed to talk more about English grammar. Maybe lose this paragraph or rewrite how Latin influence such a complicated writing style? --Editrek 13:10, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The sentence "As long as a writer's meaning is clear and the tone is appropriate for the audience, there is no reason whatsoever, real or imagined, to follow these "rules" that never were (no matter what your teacher told you when you were 13)." could be rewritten as "As long as a writer's meaning is clear and the tone is appropriate for the audience, there is no reason whatsoever to follow these "rules". It doesn't matter whether you put a grade level or age of a student. In international context, some countries have different starting school age and putting an age doesn't mean anything. It may be a suitable context for US audience that those grammar rules are taught at that grade or age, but its meaning might be lost to a global audience.