Each fall the Center for Plain Language in Washington, D.C., grades agencies of the federal government, non-profits and private companies on their efforts to write clearly. Their reports certainly make interesting reading; see the full report card for U.S. government offices here:

Writing in plain language entails many different elements from words and phrases to euphemistic labels and clichés. English is often deliberately made obscure, unclear or overly complex — when the point should simply be to communicate. (But that’s a discussion for another time.)

Let’s begin with a list of some redundant words and phrases, usually labelled pleonasms or pleonastic phrases by linguists — and these labels are themselves perfect candidates for translation to Plain English.

all-time record	record
by means of	by
close proximity	proximity (or ‘is close’)
controversial issue	issue
during the period	during
firstly	first
for a period of	for
herein	here
herewith	here
in an effort to	to
most unique	unique
past history	history
rather unique	unique
reason why	reason
set forth in	in
together with	together or with (but rarely both)
totally demolish	demolish
totally destroy	destroy

The examples above are but one limited category of words that can result in obscure language or just excessive wordiness in writing. Keep checking this blog for some of the other categories.

The Center for Plain Language also publicizes awards annually, winners and losers basically: ClearMark and WonderMark. The name of the second award I dare guess is probably short for I-wonder-what-the-f-they-are-talking-about. You can see the lists of the latest finalists by clicking on the links below::

ClearMark

WonderMark

If you would like to read more about the center and its activities, visit their website here. In summary, it’s plain that we should keep our language clear and not leave our readers to wonder what we mean.