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[H2]

[H2] Plain English Campaign

[H2]
We are world leaders in clear communication, with more than 40 years’ experience.

We officially began in 1979, to campaign against gobbledygook, jargon and misleading public information. We promote the use of plain English and offer a number of different services, including
editing and
training, to help organisations communicate with their audience as clearly as possible. Many of the organisations we have helped are shown in our list of
Crystal Mark holders.In 1994 our founder, Chrissie Maher, received an OBE in recognition of her campaigning and work in the field of plain English. Other accolades include being named ‘Information Pioneer of the Century’ by the UK’s National Information Forum, and ‘Public Affairs Achiever of the Year’ and ‘Outstanding Achiever of the Year’ in the 2010 Women in Public Life Awards.

'In all the history of the language, there has never been such a powerful grass-roots movement to influence it as the Plain   English Campaign, and Chrissie is the one who got it going.' The late Tom McArthur, world-renowned linguist and founding editor of 'The Oxford Companion to the English language'
EXCITING NEWS
- For the first time EVER we will be holding a local plain English open course in our hometown of New Mills in the beautiful High Peak. You'll be in fabulous hands with our trainer Nikki Duguid who is also local to the town. And even better - each place will only cost £200 + VAT (a saving of £130).   For more details on how to book please email
terri.schabel@plainenglish.co.uk.

[H3] Editing services

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Transform and clarify your documents with our editing services.
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[H3] Training

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Learn plain-English principles and techniques.
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[H3] Accreditation

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Crystal Mark, Internet Crystal Mark or Approved by - find out which seal of approval you need and why.
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[H3] Corporate membership

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Become a Plain English Campaign corporate member — save money and carry our logo on your documents.
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[H3] The campaign's beginnings

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Find out how and why Chrissie founded Plain English Campaign.

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[H3]         Free
guides

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We have produced a series of free guides to help you start using plain English.

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Companies and organisations that currently have a Crystal Mark or an Internet Crystal Mark include...

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Campaigning

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[H1] Campaigning

Chrissie Maher founded Plain English Campaign with the sole purpose of fighting gobbledygook, jargon and misleading public information. She launched it by shredding hundreds of official documents in Parliament Square. When a Metropolitan Police constable told Chrissie that no demonstrations were allowed, citing a lengthy unfathomable sentence from the Metropolitan Police Act 1839, Chrissie replied ‘You mean we’ve got to get off’. Surrounded by members of the news media, the constable had made Chrissie’s point as forcibly as the shredding itself. Campaigning rootsBefore founding Plain English Campaign, Chrissie spent many years during the late 60s and early 70s involved in community work, which most notably included: producing a community newspaper - the Tuebrook Bugle – that was written by local people in their own style
launching Liverpool News, Britain's first newspaper for adults with reading difficultiessetting up the Impact Foundation, a print shop and community group to teach typography and printing skills to ordinary people
serving on the National Consumer Council, a public body established to give an independent voice to consumers in the UK, andcreating the Form Market, a project to help people fill in forms and claim benefits.
The Tuebrook BugleIn 1971, Chrissie set up a community newspaper ‘written for the people, by the people’. Chrissie and the small team she had gathered to work on the paper found that a lot of problems were caused by misunderstandings and a lack of communication. The need for plain English was obvious even then.

[IMG: Tuebrook Bugle]

The Tuebrook Bugle was a big hit. It told people what was going on, in words they could understand. Suddenly the people of Tuebrook were not as powerless as they once thought they were - trees got planted, drains got cleaned, better books appeared on the shelves in the library and councillors were called to account for their actions. After a while, the name of the newspaper was shortened to ‘The Bugle’ because people in surrounding areas wanted to get involved. The Bugle became more than just a voice for Tuebrook. And because it was so successful, what began in a small house in Liverpool encouraged other communities to publish their own newspapers.

Liverpool NewsDue to Chrissie largely missing out on formal education, and not being able to read properly until her late teens, she understood the needs of adults with reading difficulties. Spurred on by this, in 1974 she set up Liverpool News, a newspaper in adult format but with simplified sentence structure and layout.
Written by Chrissie and a team of supporters from the Impact Foundation, the newspaper was a great success. After just one year it was being widely used in literacy classes all over the country. This was despite the fact that its content was devoted to news from Liverpool.
Chrissie's and her team’s writing style was very much a forerunner of the style we encourage to this day.On 9 October 1975, Nationwide (a current affairs BBC program) aired an interview with Chrissie about Liverpool News. There is a clip at https://www.facebook.com/reel/1076820364316428.

‘As patron of the Adult Literacy Basic Skills Unit (ALBSU) I have heard about the frustrations, embarrassments and restrictions   caused by the vagaries of the written word. I also know about all those emotions from personal experience of trying to write       rules for sports events and trying to write a book, never mind attempting to decode the instructions on the coffee machine!   Over six million adults in the UK have difficulty reading everyday information such as newspapers, dosage instructions for   medicines, bank statements and tax returns. Far more people have difficulty understanding the turgid offerings of some of the   bureaucracies that house, support or tax them. ‘Using plain English helps many of the most disadvantaged people in society. But the benefits for busy chief executives,   lawyers and administrators are far greater. It is vital for organisations to be able to communicate clearly with their customers,   policyholders, borrowers and tenants. No-one has the time or patience to wade through long sentences, legalese, small print or   tortured English. People want to be able to absorb information quickly, easily and at first reading. Using plain English will help   our readers achieve this aim. ‘The fight for plain English did not start at this conference, nor will it end here. But the knowledge and experience you share     over the next three days will take the campaign a little further.’ Letter from Buckingham Palace, of a public address delivered by the Princess Royal at one of our award ceremonies Letter from the Princess Royal
The Form MarketBy the mid-70s, the National Consumer Council (NCC) had heard about Chrissie’s work and invited her to join them as a member. At one of the council meetings in London, Chrissie’s idea for giving people information about state benefits they may be entitled to, and the help they need to claim them, was endorsed.
Chrissie’s idea received sponsorship from the NCC and ALRA (the Adult Literacy Resource Agency).

‘Gobbledygook may indicate a failure to think clearly, a contempt for one’s clients, or more probably a mixture of both. A system   that can’t or won’t communicate is not a safe place for democracy.’ Michael Shanks, former chairman of the National Consumer Council

Chrissie assembled and managed a team to open the Form Market.  In a converted shop in Salford, she used the skills she had developed on the Tuebrook Bugle and Liverpool News to combat official language, jargon and gobbledygook, in order to help people and small businesses to understand their rights and claim what they were entitled to.

[IMG: Form market]

The services provided included: help with filling in forms, which were usually poorly written, badly designed and filled with puzzling questions, andexplaining written information in clear terms.
All the services proved invaluable to local people. But Chrissie kept asking herself why she and her Form Market colleagues had to spend so much time helping people to understand and fill in forms. Why weren’t they clear in the first place? And so Plain English Campaign was born.The campaign’s aims were summarised in its first publication.

Plain English Campaign wants to stop the hardship, confusion and waste caused by complicated forms.  All official forms and leaflets should be written in plain, simple English. So should all agreements about money, goods and   services that are signed by members of the public.  Forms, leaflets and agreements should be easy to follow. They should be set out in a logical sequence with headings in the   right places.  All government departments, local councils and companies should set up their own plain English action groups to rewrite their forms, letters and agreements.

Raising awarenessWhile public bodies and other organisations were becoming aware of the campaign and its activities, pressure was needed to convince them to change their ways. We also needed to increase our profile. Chrissie aimed to meet both of these needs by holding an awards ceremony to both praise and shame. The success of this ceremony led to an annual awards event being held in December each year.

‘Bad English is always a sign, as Orwell suggested, of insincerity or sloppy thought. But it can be fought, with the aid of   constant ridicule. And this is happening. I think Orwell would have been cheered by the condition of our common culture   because of the sheer quantity of this necessary ridicule.  ‘From the Plain English Campaign to Pseuds’ Corner in Private Eye, from the mockery of Gordon Brown’s ‘endogenous growth   theory’ to the attacks on Sir Richard Scott’s double negatives, this remains a country passionately committed to plain speech   and instinctive in its hostility to overblown English.’  Andrew Marr British journalist, author, broadcaster and presenter

Annual awardsFor many years we presented annual awards for the best and worst examples of public-facing documents. The main awards recognised organisations and individuals who genuinely made an effort to use clear and concise English. The Golden Bull awards (for gobbledygook) and Foot in Mouth awards (for baffling quotes from public figures) injected a sense of mischief into the proceedings.
Having famous presenters and supporters ensured our awards received local, national and international media attention.

‘Due to a frequent regrettable inability to prevent my presence in other locations, I find that I must convey to you my goodwill in   a correspondence format. It was when I was still a juvenile future constitutional figurehead substitute that I first became   sensitised by mother-tongue abuse awareness. How many of us, I wonder, when faced with pretentious gobbledygook and   empty jargon, experience a kick start into despair mode? My feelings towards all of you at today’s awards are, attitudinally,   those of enormous encouragement…  ‘God bless the Plain English Campaign’. King Charles, then the Prince of Wales Letter from Kensington Palace

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Editing services

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[H1] Editing services

We can edit your printed and online documents to a very high standard of clarity to meet the needs of  your intended audience.When providing our editing service we draw on decades of experience and expertise. Our editing suggestions are based on research carried out, and principles developed, since the mid-70s.When we edit a document, we bring it up to the standard required to gain a
Crystal Mark, our seal of approval. However, you do not have to want a Crystal Mark to have your document edited.

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If you have a document you would like us to edit, or you want more information,  please email us at
info@plainenglish.co.uk.We will send you a no-obligation estimate of cost and timescale. We do our best to meet any reasonable deadline we are made aware of.Our
corporate members get a discount on our editing fees.
[H3] Proofreading
We also provide a proofreading service to check the spelling, structure and grammatical accuracy of text. This service doesn’t involve rewriting the document.For more information on this service, email us at
info@plainenglish.co.uk.
[H3] Producing summaries
If you have a very long document which is off-putting to readers due to its length or formal tone, or which is unsuitable for editing, we can produce a plain-English, consumer-friendly summary for you.If you want to know more about this service, email us at
info@plainenglish.co.uk.

[H3] Crystal Mark

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The first of its kind, the Crystal Mark is our seal of approval for the clarity of printed and online documents.

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[H3] Crystal Mark holders

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See who already has at least one Crystal Mark.

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Training

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[H1] Training

We offer a range of training courses to meet your needs. Our experienced trainers have been running plain-English training courses for many years, and have travelled the world to help organisations and individuals improve their communications.

[H1] In-house courses

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We can come to your offices to deliver a range of plain-English courses.

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[H1] Virtual in-house courses

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We offer some of our in-house courses using Zoom or Teams. The workshops cost £1,100 + VAT for a full day and £920 + VAT for a half day.

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[H1] Virtual open courses

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You can join a plain-English open course online. These cost £230 + VAT. They are ideal if you only have one or two people to train.

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[H1] Online training

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Learn plain-English principles at your own pace and in your own time with an online course.

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[H3] Plain English Diploma

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Earn a Plain English Diploma with a 12-month online course that gives you the skills you need to pass on our principles.

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[H3] Training kit

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You can buy a training package for you to train up to 48 members of staff.

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