Talk:Plain English

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 January 2019 and 6 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Npaulino, Tdemeola.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 06:43, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Neutrality

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)

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)

What is it?

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)

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)

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)

Definition

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.

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)

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. --Editrek 09:23, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

That's fine with me, Editrek. tunes 16:05, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

This paragraph:

Plain English, also known as Plain Language, is sometimes misunderstood as a "dumbed down" version of writing. A good metaphor to explain why this is not so is engineering. A good engineering design has all the elements needed to fulfill the function, but not more. It accomplishes its task with beautiful efficiency, otherwise known as style or grace. A sentence written using Plain English can be beautiful, but it must not have extra, irrelevant things hanging off of it. It shouldn't be confusing or pompous. Everything in the sentence should work toward communicating to the reader what the writer intended. Everything else should be deleted or streamlined. Plain English is efficient but not brutally so. It is in fact an act of kindness to the reader, sparing them from confusion and from having to read unnecessary words. The resulting refinement makes the words on the page transparent, so the reader can see straight through them to the meaning the writer intended.

• Made "dumbed down" a wiki link. Some people might not understand what it means especially those from non-English speaking background.
• I have split the paragraph into two - trying to limit one idea to one paragraph. Limit the repetiton start of a sentence, "A good...", to one sentence.
• Remove "...hanging off of it." A bit hard to read aloud - might not be good for speech synthesiser.
• Change contraction "shouldn't" to should not - comply with Wikipedia Manual of Style on contractions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Contractions
• Change to "In fact, it is..." gives more emphasis.

I still have a problem with the last sentence, "The resulting refinement...", but not sure how to go about making it with fewer words without losing its "punch". --Editrek 22:56, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Inconsistency

I'm a linguistics student who came to find out what the philosophy behind the 'Plain English' movement is and found a mess. This articles is horribly POV, I tried to correct some bits, but I don't know enough about this 'movement,' to contribute much more. But, more importantly, I don't understand why this article suggests that Plain English advocates an abandonment of arbitrary prescriptive rules, but then goes on to cite Orwell and Strunk, two of English's most notorious prescriptivists, without any discussion of this apparent conflict.

How is the Gettysburg Address plain English

The article mentions the Gettysburg Address as Plain English....as far as I can tell, it's quite the opposite. Original: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Plain: "Eighty seven years ago our fathers created a country built on liberty and the principle, 'All men are created equal.'"

And it goes on...can I remove it? Thanks. TrevorRC 10:55, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Could the "how-to" content be in the WP: namespace?

No rule against how-to content there, as long as it's to help users contribute to Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.119.192.165 (talk) 03:53, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Plain English as a concept: good. Plain English as "good": bad

I've gone through this and found myself deleting most of it. Sorry.

The article is full of OR.

Wikipedia is not the place to suggest what is right, or to write a short unsourced critical essay. On any subject.

This is a potentially fascinating subject area for proper study. It's certainly a notable topic. For example, presenting the research into why latinates are considered "not plain English." You could print sections from George Orwell's essay on latin words.

Is there a preference for Subject-Object-Verb in English? Why? (Don't make it up - find the sources)

All very interesting, and part of the history of the English language.

Presuming "Plain English" is right, or workable, isn't the way to approach it here. There's other sites for that.

Besides, good intentions don't make good paving stones.

Ddawkins73 (talk) 21:25, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

No examples

The article in its present form gives no examples of Plain English, and not even a description that would let the reader decide whether a given passage of text was in Plain English. Thus the article fails the "What" criterion of the Five Ws, by not answering the question, "What is Plain English"? The article could benefit from examples that show un-plain English and their Plain English equivalents, along with analysis of the grammatical constructs that depart from Plain English. --Teratornis (talk) 20:12, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Linguistic purism

I just removed this sentence from the lead: "It often involves linguistic purism in English, using native Anglo-Saxon, or Germanic, words instead of those derived from Latin and Greek." It's unsourced and IMO it's dubious. If someone feels it belongs and has a source, I think it should go in the body instead of the lead because, for one, the lead is supposed to summarize the body, not introduce new material, and, more importantly, it needs more explanation as most people will have no idea which words are native Anglo-Saxon and Germanic vs Latin and Greek, so saying that in the lead raises more questions than it answers. —PermStrump(talk) 02:34, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Oh? You are the vandal. I was curious why this article was not about Germanic purity in English! I would advise you fix your vandalism!2601:806:4301:C100:B8CB:3EB5:3679:D2DE (talk) 00:34, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

No Latin

This article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_influence_in_English states that Plain English is a type of English without using Latin. But that is not what this article says!2601:806:4301:C100:B8CB:3EB5:3679:D2DE (talk) 00:32, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Lack of Examples

I feel that, if one were to truly understand the concept of plain English, one must look at some examples and situations where plain English is relevant and important. An ongoing issue in the judicial system of the United States is that jurors, when receiving information on how to determine a verdict on a particular case, do not always fully understand what the judge is saying, and examples of these types of situations are needed in order to show to the reader why this article is important or relevant in today's world. Not only does this article not answer the "what" criterion, but it also does not provide sufficient insight as to "why" as well. Tdemeola (talk) 15:51, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Is the etymology section necessary?

Without any additional facts about its etymology, the current etymology section seems so trivial as to be useless. Also, it doesn't seem like it would be the case that there even would be an interesting piece of etymology, seeing as the etymology is so clear. Given that even wiktionary doesn't have an etymology section for this phrase, it seems entirely pointless. --3thanguy7 (talk) 17:02, 23 April 2021 (UTC)