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Jargon, plain English and local government
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
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Late last week I received an email newsletter from a national organisation about local government issues.
The lead piece was titled “What’s stopping local government from using plain English?” and linked to an interesting online debate about the use of language in local government (something I’ve blogged about previously).
The next article was entitled “Reducing worklessness and raising skills”.
Sometimes I know I find myself slipping into public sector-speak, but how many people know what “worklessness” is?
Surely that’s a classic example of not using plain English?
Anyway, if you want to know what worklessness is, here’s a definition, thanks to the London Development Agency:
Detachment from the formal labour market in particular areas, and among particular groups.
Workless individuals include individuals who are unemployed and claiming unemployment benefits, individuals who are economically inactive and eligible for inactive benefits (who may or may not be claiming them), and individuals who are working exclusively in the informal economy (who may or may not be also claiming benefits)
What’s wrong with “people not working” as a plain English alternative I don’t know…
Tags: local government, plain English
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Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Great post, sometimes I think the public sector has forgotten how to speak plainly. Some of the briefs I have been digesting recently have been rather more challenging than they should have been.
Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 6:09 am
thanks for the comment Chris - I do wonder sometimes why people write in unnecessarily complicated language - most of the reasons ignore the principle that communicating is about transferring information from one person to another.