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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/01/20, SPi
oxfor d guide to
Plain English
OX FO R D G U I D E TO
Plain English
FIFTH EDITION
Martin Cutts
1
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Martin Cutts 1995, 1999, 2004, 2009, 2013, 2020
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First published as The Plain English Guide 1995
Published as The Quick Reference Plain English Guide 1999
Second edition published 2004
Third edition published 2009
Fourth edition published 2013
Fifth edition published 2020
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019946744
ISBN 978–0–19–884461–7
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
Links to third-party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third-party website referenced in this work.
Contents
Acknowledgementsvii
Starting points ix
The thirty guidelines xxiv
Summary of the twelve main guidelines xxvi
1 Planning comes first 1

2 Organizing your material in a reader-centred structure 10
3 Writing short sentences and clear paragraphs 22
4 Preferring plain words 33
5 Writing concisely 57
6 Favouring active-voice verbs 68
7 Using vigorous verbs 78
8 Using vertical lists 85
9 Converting negative to positive 93
10 Using good punctuation 98
11 Using good grammar 119
12 Keeping errors in Czech: its time to Proof read 129
13 Dealing with some troublesome words and phrases 137
14 Using or avoiding foreign words 154
15 Undoing knotty noun strings 159
16 Reducing cross-references 161
17 Exploring and exploding some writing myths 164
18 Avoiding clichés 173
19 Pitching your writing at the right level 178
20 Writing sound starts and excellent endings 184
21 Creating better emails 189
22 Using inclusive language 194
23 Using alternatives to words alone 205
24 Caring enough about customers to write to them clearly 213
25 Overseeing colleagues’ writing 220
vi Contents
26 Writing better instructions 229

27 Clarifying for the Web 243
28 Making legal language lucid 253
29 Writing low-literacy plain English 269
30 Clarifying page layout: some basics 282
Appendix 1: Commonest words 301

Appendix 2: A short history of plain-English moments 307
Sources and notes 319
Index325
Acknowledgements
My thanks go to those who have given help and advice on parts of

this edition. Chapter 29 draws heavily on the practical knowledge of
Janet Pringle, a Canadian expert on the needs of low-literacy readers,
and she also commented in detail on the draft of that chapter. My col-
league Sarah Carr commented on chapter 19 and conducted several
readability tests for me. Christina Gleeson, another Plain Language
Commission associate, spent many hours extracting word-frequency
data from the sources. I remain grateful to Monica Sowash, who ran
the focus-group interviews for the original edition in 1995. Throughout,
my wife Ingrid has given constant help and support.
The book is dedicated to my parents, Ivor and Joan Cutts; they
raised me with an interest in words and gave unstintingly of their time
and encouragement.
Several organizations have allowed me to include parts of their
printed documents. I’m grateful to the Local Government Ombudsman
for an example in chapter 4; Calgary Sexual Health Centre, Canada,
for examples in chapter 29; and the following for examples in chap-
ter 30—Enfield Homes, YHA (England and Wales), Simplification
Centre, St Albans District Council, Yorkshire Water, and Enquire
(Children in Scotland). The ‘Nebraska’ examples in chapter 27 are
quoted from <http://www.nngroup.com> with permission.
About the author

Martin Cutts is director of Clearest.co.uk Ltd, which owns the trading
name Plain Language Commission. The company provides editorial
and training services in the plain-language field and runs the Clear
English Standard accreditation scheme for documents and websites.
His books include Lucid Law (2000), Clarifying Eurolaw (2001), and
Clarifying EC Regulations (co-author Emma Wagner, 2002), all available
on free download from <http://www.clearest.co.uk>. At Liverpool
viii Acknowledgements
University, he edited the student newspaper Guild and City Gazette

(1973–4) and co-edited the creative arts magazine Sphinx. From 1974
to 1976 he edited Liverpool News, a paper for low-literacy readers. From
1976 to 1978 he edited the Salford Champion news magazine. He is the
editor of Indlish by Jyoti Sanyal (Viva Books, 2006), and consultant
editor to the Adult Learners’ Writing Guide by Ruth Thornton
(Chambers, 2006). In 2013, he received the Christine Mowat Plain
Language Achievement Award ‘for outstanding contribution to plain
language’. He has appeared on BBC1’s Watchdog and ITV’s Martin
Lewis Money Show as well as BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours, Money Box,
and Today. He co-founded the Plain English Campaign in 1979 and
remained a partner there until 1988.
Starting points
What’s the problem?

More than a century ago, the legendary Cambridge University pro-
fessor Arthur Quiller-Couch encouraged his students to write in a
clear style without inflated language. He liked plain English, he said,
which he summarized as the difference between ‘He was conveyed to
his place of residence in an intoxicated condition’ and ‘He was carried
home drunk’.
Quiller-Couch’s advice remains relevant to today’s academic, busi-
ness, and official writers. During workshops, I often ask them to list
the most desirable features of the reports, papers, and emails they have
to read. Nearly always they say ‘clear’, ‘brief ’, and ‘easy to follow’. They
loathe foggy language because it obscures meaning and muddles the
mind, and they dislike badly organized material because it takes time
and energy to disentangle. But, as the workshops show, what’s really
hard is for writers to spot these faults in their own work—sadly, we all
have them—and put them right.
As the book will explore, fog appears in many guises. Long and
tedious examples abound, but here are a few short ones to begin with.
First this highly abstract statement from a 26-page job advert for a
police officer in Northamptonshire:
Our Chief Constable must be able to see beyond the horizons of convention to
make the paradigm shift.
This style of writing is not trivial or accidental. It acts as a subtle invita-

tion to join the jargonaut club at the top of the police force. It’s send-
ing applicants a coded message that a fluent command of fog is
required for the post. It would be a brave person who came for inter-
view and said, ‘If you give me this role, I’ll start by ensuring your job
adverts are clearer than this one.’
x Starting points
Visiting a school, I saw a notice in the reception area saying:

In the event of an emergency evacuation of these premises should you require
assistance to facilitate your evacuation would you please advise your host or
reception on arrival.
This exemplifies the widespread problem of posh, pretentious fog.

Perhaps it could simply have said:
Visitors: if there’s an emergency, will you need help to leave the building? If so,
please tell reception or your host now.
A notice in the rear window of a minibus for disabled people also

exceeded the usual inflations of official style, telling motorists:
Please leave sufficient space behind this vehicle to allow safe ingress and egress of
mechanically propelled, seated position, ambulatory devices, by means of author-
ized lifting equipment thank you.
In more relaxed English, it could have said:

Leave us a gap!
Please leave at least 2 metres (6 feet) clear so we can lift wheelchairs in and out.
Thanks.
In all these cases, my fancy is that the sinister Fog People, fluent
speakers of Obscuranto, have influenced the authors to adopt over-
formal language they’d never use in a face-to-face chat. The result is
that simple ideas have become overdressed.
Of course, writing clear documents is much tougher for all of us
than scoffing at poor ones. We have to think hard about what we’re
going to say, why we’re saying it, and who’ll be reading it. The reward,
though, is that readers usually prefer the result. Probably they won’t
even notice, and that’s one definition of good writing. This book aims
to help you reach that goal more quickly.
There’s a daily trickle of legalistic fog. My postbag includes a company’s
acknowledgement of some money I’ve sent it to invest, which says:
The said aggregate further single premium shall be apportioned equally among
the existing Policies and consequently in relation to each such Policy the Further
Starting points xi
Minimum Sum Assured secured by the part of the said aggregate further single
premium apportioned thereto shall be a sum equal to the aggregate Further
Minimum Sum Assured specified in the Schedule divided by the total number of
the existing Policies the Further Participating Sum Assured so secured shall be a
sum equal to the aggregate Further Participating Sum Assured so specified div-
ided by the total number of the existing Policies and the amount of the further
single premium paid under each of the existing Policies shall be a sum equal to the
further aggregate single premium so specified divided by the total number of the
existing Policies
That’s a single unpunctuated sentence of 132 words, without even a full

stop at the end—rampant legalese.
My post also includes a bank letter, dated 10 July, full of error-strewn
fog. The italics are mine but the words are the bank’s:
I am writeing to you in regards to a cheque that was paid into your account on the
7th May. Unfortunetly this credit was paid into your account a second time by mis-
take on the 8th May. Hence, today, (10th May) we will be debiting your account
for the sum of £843.00. I apologise for the inconveniance this has caused you.
So many blunders (including the date it was written) in so short a

document. Banks need customers’ confidence and trust, so this
doesn’t help.
Then there’s a letter from the ‘director of quality’ of a college—copied
to me by a student who has used its grievance procedure—which
includes the statement:
From the plethora of letters that have been received from you . . . it is impossible to
determine the gravamen of your complaint.
The student asks me whether plethora and gravamen—along with

such phrases as preliminary procedural representations and preliminary
representations on points of procedure—are acceptable in a letter like
this. He says: ‘My opinion is that he’s deliberately trying to confuse
me.’ Just so, and using a fog of high-register language is also a way of
pulling rank.
A resident of central Wales sends me a 49,000-word consultation
paper from the Welsh Assembly, asking if I can make sense of it as he’d
xii Starting points
like to complete the included questionnaire. It includes sentences of

abstract fog like:
• The whole hierarchy from waste minimisation through collection, recycling
and residual dispersal has spatial implications.
• The diversity of Central Wales’ environment also offers unrealised eco-
nomic potential if developed sensitively and knowledge based industries,
new environmental technologies and sustainable forms of high-quality
tourism, both inland and at the coast, can be encouraged.
Texts like this make readers halt, backtrack, and—often—give up.

So the consultation’s merits may be lost amid the turgid prose.
And finally my postbag includes a charity’s briefing paper, written
in a fog of full-fat Obscuranto:
The ‘onion model’ . . . set out . . . the Government’s vision of what was needed to
achieve whole system change. Recent tragic events have demonstrated that there
is an urgent need for still greater integration at every layer of the ‘onion’ in front-
line delivery, processes, strategy and governance. At the level of service delivery in
particular there remains significant practical, philosophical and resource barriers
to full integration. Further legislative changes at governance level alone will not
automatically make it easier to address these barriers.
The eyes glaze over and the brain fails—how could anyone have
thought this was publishable? How much time of how many salaried
officials was eventually wasted trying to make sense of it and, perhaps,
respond? Did anyone dare to return it with a note saying: ‘Studied but
not understood—please rewrite in normal English.’
Unclear writing flourishes partly because few people are willing to
say they don’t understand. Such confessions by public figures are so
rare that they tend to make the news. In 2007, when the Web was still
uncharted territory to many, Judge Peter Openshaw was presiding
over the trial of three alleged hackers and had to ask prosecutors to
explain terms like browser, broadband, and dial-up:
The trouble is I don’t understand the language. I don’t really understand what a
website is . . . I haven’t quite grasped the concepts.
When trying to understand old-style legislation, the bench has

sometimes expressed its dismay even more colourfully. Here’s part
Starting points xiii
of Lord Justice Harman’s famous judgment in Davy v Leeds

Corporation (1964):
To reach a conclusion on this matter involved the court in wading through a
monstrous legislative morass, staggering from stone to stone and ignoring the
marsh gas exhaling from the forest of schedules lining the way on each side.
I regarded it at one time, I must confess, as a Slough of Despond through which
the court would never drag its feet but I have, by leaping from tussock to tussock
as best I might, eventually, pale and exhausted, reached the other side.
At a parish council meeting in 2006, councillor Alan Wilkinson said a

report from Teesdale district council was ‘incomprehensible to any
normal person’ and its reference to ‘involuntary exclusion from the
world of work’ meant nothing more than ‘unemployment’. Warming
to his theme, the councillor said:
Nobody talks like this; nobody reads books written like this. Frankly it’s a turnoff,
and it’s not surprising that we are having trouble attracting new members.
The 18,000-word report he complained about was called ‘Sustainability

appraisal scoping report for the local development framework core
strategy’—those noun strings being a sure sign that the Fog People
had been at work. The report included statements like ‘There is a high
level of social capital and community cohesion assisted by a strong
foundation of participatory community activity and associated sup-
port organisations’ and ‘The more rural wards also suffer from high
levels of employment deprivation.’ (In other words, ‘Unemployment
is much higher in the countryside.’) Not all the councillors agreed
with Wilkinson, though. Showing why defeating the Fog People can
be so difficult, one stoutly defended the authors:
This is just the way council reports are written, and if you want to be a councillor
then you need to understand that. If you go to France, they speak French. Here
in the council, we speak like this.
It’s not just money and effort that are wasted by verbal confusion—it
can cost lives. In 1977, two passenger aircraft collided at Tenerife airport,
killing 583 people. The crash was largely caused by misunderstandings
about the phrase ‘at takeoff’. One plane’s flight crew used it to mean
xiv Starting points
they were in the process of taking off, while the tower controller took it
to mean the plane was at the takeoff point.
Such ambiguity lurks as an ever-present danger in any language that
depends so much on context for its meaning. Does our friendly high-
street ‘family butcher’ cut up meat or butcher families? Does a ‘field
shelter’ protect a field or keep rain off the cows? Does ‘Take him out!’
order you to kill your enemy or go on a date with him? Sometimes it
really matters: Derek Bentley, aged 19, was found guilty of murder and
hanged in 1953 after a British jury found that his alleged remark ‘Let
him have it, Chris!’ urged his accomplice to gun down a police officer
rather than surrender his weapon.
A recurring theme at the inquest into the death of 52 people in the
London terrorist bombings on 7 July 2005 was the obscure language
employed by police and fire chiefs, some of whom had great difficulty
using everyday words in the courtroom—they adopted management-
speak that infuriated the coroner, Lady Justice Hallett. It must have
upset the victims’ families too, as their recommendations included
‘use of plain English by emergency services’. Lady Hallett berated
officers for using jargon that might hinder rescuers:
This isn’t just somebody being pedantic about the use of English . . . When it
comes to managing incidents, people don’t understand what the other person[’s
job role] is. I don’t know whether a crew manager is somebody who is responsible
for supplies or is used to fighting fires.
The coroner’s final report included a section headed The use of

‘plain English’. Questioning whether another service would understand
what was meant if told that a ‘management conference demountable
unit [i.e. a mobile control-room] is on the way from the management
resource centre’, Lady Hallett said in court:
What worries me is all you senior people of these organisations are allowing
yourselves to be taken over by management jargon . . . I just think that you . . . need
to say we have to communicate with people in plain English.
Of course, what is plain English to one person may be obscure to

another, as this book will explore, but her point was well made. She’d
rubbed shoulders with the Fog People, and she didn’t like their style.
Starting points xv
It’s obvious to anyone who’s been around since the late 1970s, when
the modern plain-English movement got going, that government and
other official documents meant for the public have become much
clearer in style and structure, with health and welfare leaflets particu-
larly being much improved. Today, it’s rare to find a real shocker
because ideas about writing plain English have become embedded in
many official standards. The 2018 online version of the British pass-
port renewal form, for example, is a pleasure to complete. The gov.uk
website offers a writing style guide for civil servants and a specific
guide on how to write for the website (Writing for gov.uk—How to
write well for your audience, including specialists). One section says,
‘Plain English is the whole ethos of gov.uk: it’s a way of writing’, and
spells out the need to use everyday vocabulary:
Do not use formal or long words when easy or short ones will do. Use ‘buy’
instead of ‘purchase’, ‘help’ instead of ‘assist’, and ‘about’ instead of ‘approximately’.
We also lose trust from people if we write government ‘buzzwords’ and jargon.
Often, these words are too general and vague and can lead to misinterpretation or
empty, meaningless text. We can do without these words. Write conversationally—
picture your audience and write as if you were talking to them one-to-one but
with the authority of someone who can actively help.
That last point brings to mind the conversational style of a famous let-
ter co-written by four Bletchley Park codebreakers—including the
computer pioneer Alan Turing—to the British prime minister,
Winston Churchill, in 1941. They were desperate for extra staff but
Whitehall officials had repeatedly ignored their requests, so they
plumped for route one—a hand-delivered letter to 10 Downing Street
that began:
Some weeks ago you paid us the honour of a visit, and we believe that you regard
our work as important. You will have seen that, thanks largely to the energy and
foresight of Commander Travis, we have been well supplied with the ‘bombes’ for
the breaking of the German Enigma codes. We think, however, that you ought to
know that this work is being held up, and in some cases is not being done at all,
principally because we cannot get sufficient staff to deal with it. Our reason for
writing to you direct is that for months we have done everything that we possibly
can through the normal channels, and that we despair of any early improvement
without your intervention. No doubt in the long run these particular requirements
xvi Starting points
will be met, but meanwhile still more precious months will have been wasted,
and as our needs are continually expanding we see little hope of ever being
adequately staffed.
The average sentence length—32 words—may be a bit high, but a

readability test on this passage (see chapter 19) shows a British reading
age of 16, so it was an easy read for Churchill. The style is direct, with
fairly simple vocabulary and little flummery. Within a day, Churchill
had minuted his chief of staff, General Ismay: ‘ACTION THIS DAY
Make sure they have all they want on extreme priority and report to
me that this has been done.’ He had his faults, but verbosity wasn’t
one of them.
Guidelines not rules

The book focuses on writing essential information, a loose descrip-
tion that includes business and government letters, emails, webpages,
and reports; consumer contracts; labels and product instructions;
leaflets and forms on tax, health, welfare, and legal rights; parking
signs; legal judgments; and rules, regulations, and laws. These things
may seem humdrum compared to the mighty works of literature but
they help oil the engines of industry, commerce, and administration.
They provide information that, if misunderstood or half understood,
disadvantages people, oppresses them, or—at the least—wastes their
time and money. The book has one main aim: to help you write and set
out essential information more clearly. It does this by suggesting and
justifying the guidelines listed on page xxv.
I deliberately say guidelines, not rules. There’s a guideline to aim for
an average sentence length of 15–20 words, but there’s no rule banning
sentences of more than 20 words. There’s a guideline to use words
your readers are likely to understand, but there’s no rule banning
obscure terms as long as you explain them to the uninitiated. Just as
important, if a difficult word is really the best word for the job, you
should use it.
So this isn’t a simple recipe book of do’s and don’ts. Writing will still
be hard work—perhaps the hardest work you do—but the guidelines
Starting points xvii
should make it easier. The book is not, of course, about writing novels,
plays, poetry, or newspapers, though I use a few of those as sources
for examples.
The examples I give are genuine apart from some obvious fictions
I’ve created, mainly in chapter 2. I’ve sometimes changed words to
avoid identifying authors or to add essential context. For some
examples, I’ve provided rewrites. These are not meant to be the sole or
perfect solutions—there are many ways of saying the same thing.
No writing can truly be regarded as clearer or better until users’
performance proves it. Several times I mention the value of testing
high-use documents with likely users, to see whether they can follow
the information and act on it. I’ve taken my own advice by infor-
mally testing the clarity of some of the ‘before’ and ‘after’ examples.
A focus group of 35 people rated them for clarity, giving a score
out of 20. The group included police officers, firefighters, librarians,
unemployed people, teachers, pensioners, booksellers, and gardeners.
It wasn’t representative of the population but gives a snapshot of
readers’ views.
In general, the focus group preferred the versions that reflected my
guidelines, rating them significantly clearer than the originals. That
doesn’t prove these versions would be better understood in real life,
but it’s an indicator. The results, shown at relevant points in the text,
encourage me to recommend the guidelines more confidently. There’s
research evidence to support most of the guidelines, though I’ve not
always quoted it because the book is not an academic work. In any
case, several of the guidelines are obvious common sense.
What has motivated me and others to work in the plain-English
field is that clearer documents can improve people’s access to services,
benefits, justice, and a fair deal. If people understand what they’re
asked to read and sign, they can make better-informed choices and
know more about their rights and duties. They might also see more
clearly what business and government are doing. Plain English should
be an accepted part of plain dealing between consumers and business,
and between citizens and the State.
xviii Starting points
What’s meant by plain English?

The guidelines will help you create plain-English documents. But
what’s meant by plain English (or ‘plain language’, as it’s sometimes
called outside the UK)? To pin it down, members of PLAIN—the
association of plain-language professionals—adopted the following
definition in 2014:
A communication is in plain language if its wording, structure, and design are so
clear that the intended audience can easily find what they need, understand what
they find, and use that information.
So this means authors need to make informed judgements about

whether the material is clear enough to be easily understood. It also
means using good organization and layout to help readers navigate a
path through the material and easily use what they find. It doesn’t
mean always using simple words at the expense of the most accurate
or writing whole documents in childish language—even if, as some
research claims, about 5 million adults in the UK and 70 million in the
US read and write below the level at which their skills are useful to
them in their daily life (functional literacy).
According to data from the UK’s National Literacy Trust website, the
average reading age among adults seems to be about 13, or three years
below school-leaving age. Not high, but at least it’s well above func-
tional-literacy level. This means documents for a mass audience need
to be pitched at about reading age 13. Plain-English guidelines can help
authors achieve this. Chapter 19 offers ideas on how to check whether
your writing is around this level.
Plain English embraces honesty and transparency, as well as clarity—
or should do. It was disappointing that the UK government failed to
give detailed and impartial information about the 2016 referendum on
whether or not to leave the EU (the Brexit vote), issuing only a short
and strongly pro-Remain leaflet to every household. What an oppor-
tunity missed to get a group of wise people to write something deep,
clear, and even-handed that the public could refer to before deciding
which way to vote.
Starting points xix
Good information does not lie, fudge, or tell half-truths, especially

when it comes from those who are socially or financially dominant. So
health leaflets should not withhold facts that some might find unpalat-
able, such as the higher risk to children of gene-based health problems
when people of close kinship intermarry or contract cousin marriages
over several generations. Products claiming green credentials should
not use duplicitous labels like ‘recyclable’, since almost anything can
be recycled, or ‘harvested from sustainable forests’, since all forests are
sustainable and what matters is whether they are indeed sustained,
and how. Supermarkets should not imply their products come from
named—apparently British—farms that are in fact fictitious, or mis-
lead by stating that wet wipes that take years to rot are ‘flushable’. Many
organizations routinely voice a commitment to plain English, and
occasionally this reflects reality; but when the news media carry
almost daily evidence of systematic duplicity by social-media giants,
banks, pharmaceutical firms, police agencies, and government depart-
ments, it’s right to look for proof behind their pledges.
Just because a document or website is written in plain English
doesn’t make its contents true, reasonable, ethical, fair, or in any other
way virtuous or worth reading. Bad policies, bad arguments, and bad
laws are not magically made good by being written in plain English.
Plain English is not an absolute: what is plain to an audience of sci-
entists, bridge players, or philosophers may be obscure to everyone
else. And because of variations in usage across the English-speaking
world, what is plain in England may be obscure in India or the US.
Similarly, what is plain today may be obscure a hundred years from
now because vocabulary, language preferences, and readers’ prior
knowledge alter over time.
Does plain English work?

Research shows that documents carefully crafted in plain English can
improve readers’ comprehension. In an American study of instruc-
tions given by word of mouth to jurors, the plain versions improved
comprehension by 14 percentage points, from 45 per cent to 59 per cent.
xx Starting points
In a further study, the same instructions were given in both speech

and writing. Jurors understood the plain versions ‘almost fully’, said
the researchers. In a study to test understanding of medical consent
forms in the US, readers of the original form could answer correctly
only 2.36 questions out of 5. Using the plainer form, they got 4.52 ques-
tions right, a 91 per cent improvement; they also took much less time
to answer.
In 1999 the US Social Security Administration wanted to issue an
annual benefit statement to every working American over 25 years old,
some 125 million people. Plain-language experts at the Center for
Clear Communication, Inc. tested the previous six-page form and
found it poorly structured and presented, with some important details
buried. So they wrote, designed, and pilot-tested four prototypes of
a new form. These versions had a clear title, good organization, and a
design that reduced production and handling costs. They were con-
sumer-tested through a national mail survey of 16,000 people. A
Gallup survey in 2000 reported that ‘The results to date are glowing.
The new social security statements have played a significant role in
increasing Americans’ understanding of social security.’
Much of the most convincing research on the benefits of plain
English relates to legal documents. And the most telling point of all
is that to my knowledge no company in an English-speaking country
that has issued a plain-English insurance policy, pension contract,
or bank guarantee has ever reverted to a traditional, legalistic style
of wording.
Professor Joseph Kimble’s authoritative book Writing for Dollars,
Writing to Please (2012) devotes some 64 pages to projects that have
shown what he calls ‘the extraordinary benefits’ of plain language in
saving money and improving people’s lives across several continents.
UK consumer contracts—plain English required by law

Many jurisdictions in English-speaking countries and throughout the
European Union require clarity in consumer contracts. In the UK, the
relevant law is the Consumer Rights Act 2015. It applies a test of fairness
Starting points xxi
to terms used by traders in transactions with consumers. A separate

and distinct requirement is that written terms of a consumer contract
or consumer notice must be ‘transparent’.
The main aspect of transparency is that each term should be plain
and intelligible to the average person, whom the Act defines as ‘a con-
sumer who is reasonably well informed, observant and circumspect’.
The official guidance to the Act is shown on the Competition
and Markets Authority (CMA) website. I’ll pick out some of its
main points because they help show the legal framework. They
also show how far we’ve come since the first edition of this book
appeared in 1995.
The guidance says: ‘What may appear to be relatively straightfor-
ward technicalities can have onerous implications of which consumers
are likely to be unaware.’ Among its examples of technicalities are
clauses that use language like ‘indemnity’ and ‘statutory rights’.
If a term is not transparent (i.e. not plain and intelligible) or prom-
inent and it creates a ‘significant imbalance, contrary to the require-
ments of good faith, to the detriment of consumers’, then it’s unfair.
This means it’s not legally binding on consumers, who can challenge it
in the courts.
If a term fails only the transparency test, a trader may still enforce it
against an individual consumer. But if the term is ambiguous, it must
be interpreted in the way most favourable to the consumer. The CMA
may take enforcement action against traders who use terms that fail on
transparency alone.
On the style and structure of contracts, the guidance says:
Ordinary words should be used as far as possible and in their normal sense. In the
CMA’s view, words that are not literally unintelligible are likely to fail the transpar-
ency test where, for instance, as a result of vagueness of language, their effect is
likely to be unclear or misleading to the average consumer. To ensure that terms
are fully intelligible, there is a need for clarity in the way terms are organised.
Transparency is more likely to be achieved where sentences are short, and the text
of the contract is broken up with easily understood subheadings covering recog-
nisably similar issues. Statutory references, elaborate definitions, and extensive
cross-referencing should be avoided.
xxii Starting points
Tiny print is outlawed: ‘In written contracts, the print must be clear.
This depends not only on the size of font used but also its colour, the
background and, where paper is used, its quality.’
Lack of enforcement against foggy contract language has hit one
group of consumers very hard—motorists. If they go to a privately run
car park, they’re effectively agreeing to the conditions stated on the
entrance boards and other signs dotted around the site, which some-
times they don’t see and often they don’t read. Lurking in the small
print and legalistic jargon are heavy fees—often £80 to £100—for
such contraventions as overstaying the free-to-park time by a few
minutes, walking off the landowner’s site, and making an error when
punching in the car number at the pay-and-display machine. The car-
park operators, acting under agreements with supermarket chains and
other landowners, make much of their money from this fee-demand
income, which incentivizes them to impose large numbers of tickets.
These they pursue with aggressive letters threatening court action
and costs.
The operators ticketed 5.65 million drivers in 2017–18 (RAC
Foundation figures), which means a potential income of about £450
million. Operators that have the right to get motorists’ data from the
government are largely self-regulated by their own trade body; and
although the signs should comply with the law on plain language and
a code of practice that emphasizes the need for clarity, they are often
far from clear. One sign says:
Every person who enters and uses this car parking facility agrees to be bound by
the car parks [sic] terms and conditions of use and warrant [sic] that they are the
registered keeper of the vehicle or have been authorised by the registered keeper
to enter into the contract. In the event that an authorised driver other than the
registered keeper of the vehicle is responsible for a breach of the car parks [sic]
terms and conditions, the registered keeper will be required to disclose details of
the driver responsible. Failure to provide the correct details of the driver and
act unreasonably may result in an application to the courts for an order for the
registered keeper to disclose the requested information and additional costs will
be incurred.
Starting points xxiii
The final sentence can mean only that the company requires the
keeper to ‘act unreasonably’—surely a first in contract drafting. This
text and several other muddled sign wordings have been approved by
the responsible trade body as being in ‘plain and intelligible language’.
Thus is the meaning of ‘plain language’ skewed.
How you may want to use this book

I’ve set out the book in the order in which I suggest you read it, with
the guidelines—and a summary of the main guidelines—on the next
few pages. This accords with my advice to put the big news early in a
document. From the summary of guidelines, you may then want to
delve into chapters that particularly interest you or help with a current
need. Otherwise, if you’re reading the book as a student or on the
way to work, you may like to tackle a chapter a day. Most books—
especially those about writing—are far too long, so I’ve tried to keep
this one short.
The thirty guidelines
Each chapter begins with a guideline that is then expanded and dis-
cussed. The thirty guidelines are set out below.
1 Plan before you write.
2 Organize your material so readers can see the important informa-
tion early and navigate the document easily.
3 Over the whole document, make the average sentence length
15–20 words.
4 Use words your readers are likely to understand.
5 Use only as many words as you need for meaning and tone of
voice.
6 Prefer active-voice verbs unless there’s a good reason for using the
passive.
7 Use good verbs to express the action in your sentences.
8 Use vertical lists to break up complicated text.
9 Put your points positively when you can.
10 Put accurate punctuation at the centre of your writing.
11 Use good grammar, but relax—you don’t need to know hundreds
of grammatical terms.
12 Check your material before the readers do.
13 Think carefully how—or whether or not—you’ll use certain
words and phrases.
14 Choose only Latin or French that doesn’t seem Latin or French.
15 Untie noun strings.
16 Cross-references mean cross readers, so minimize them.
17 Avoid being enslaved by writing myths.
18 Avoid using clichés.
19 Remember that the population’s average reading age is about 13.
20 In emails and letters, avoid fusty first sentences and clichéd
finishes.
The thirty guidelines xxv
21 Take as much care with emails as you would with the rest of your
writing.
22 Use inclusive language when it’s accurate and feasible.
23 Consider different ways of setting out your information.
24 Treat customers fairly with clear, well-written correspondence.
25 Supervise colleagues’ writing carefully and considerately to boost
their morale and effectiveness.
26 Devote special effort to producing lucid and well-organized
instructions.
27 Don’t waffle on the Web—put the big news early and make the
style and structure punchy.
28 Apply plain-English techniques to legal documents such as insur-
ance policies, car-hire agreements, laws, and wills.
29 For people with low literacy, cut out the fine detail, be brief, and
(ideally) test your documents with the real experts—the readers.
30 Use clear layout to display your words well.
Summary of the twelve main guidelines
1—Plan before you write.

When Venus and Serena Williams were still under 5, their ambitious
father drafted a 78-page plan—yes, perhaps a bit on the long side—
mapping out their ascent from playing on public tennis courts to
world domination. His plan paid off handsomely.
For most of us, planning’s an essential first step in any writing task.
We benefit from jotting down on paper or screen the document’s main
purpose, our likely readership, and the points we’ll include. This
breaks the deadlock and creates a structured start.
Then we organize the points into a numbered sequence or under
headings and subheadings. Next we expand the points into rough sen-
tences, which begin to form a first draft. Much of the quality in a docu-
ment comes from editing and polishing the draft, then doing the same
repeatedly for as long as you’re improving its content, structure, and style.
See—chapter 1, which describes some simple planning techniques
and explains the process method, a systematic five-step approach to
writing.
2—Organize your material so readers can see

the important information early and navigate
the document easily.
When you’re writing for busy people, they want to get in, get on, and
get out. So you need to give them a clear structure they can see
instantly. It may be questions and answers; headings and subheadings;
chronological order; or the top-heavy triangle (newsy points in des-
cending order of importance).
Normally, put the big news early—unless, of course, it’s particularly
upsetting or surprising, when a gentle or diplomatic lead-in (or perhaps
a phone call) will be better. If your document has more than a few
Summary of the twelve main guidelines xxvii
hundred words, readers may also benefit from a summary of the most
important points at the start.
See—chapter 2, which shows some easy-to-use structures.
3—Make the average sentence length 15–20 words.

Long sentences are often hard work for readers, so the full stop should
be the most common punctuation mark on the page. Your simplest
way of raising readability is to cut average sentence length as far as you
sensibly can below 20 words.
This is different from how many of us were taught to write at school
or college, where the often meandering sentences of long-dead literary
greats were highly regarded. But their readers were usually a well-
educated minority with time on their hands, whereas today most of us
are writing for busy people. Our documents may be at best a necessary
nuisance in their hectic life. If we make them work too hard, they’ll
prefer to read something else.
Readers easily lose the thread of long sentences. And the more
complex your topic, the shorter your sentences should ideally be.
Then readers can apply their limited time and effort to understanding
what you mean and acting on it.
Here’s an example of a 79-word sentence, part of a shop’s response
to a complaint:
I am sorry to hear that the casing at the back of the pressure washer is broken,
please be assured this is not the quality of products we aim to provide at John
Lewis and I will certainly feed this back, as the item was delivered directly by our
supplier I will have to pass this over to our supplier direct team for them to
arrange a replacement with Karcher, they will call you back when this has been
done. [Email, 2017]
This can easily be split into several sentences, removing some of the
worst dross along the way, perhaps like this:
I’m sorry that the casing at the back of the pressure washer is broken. Please be
assured this is not the kind of quality we aim to provide at John Lewis. As the item
was delivered directly by our supplier, I’ll pass this over to our supplier-direct
xxviii Summary of the twelve main guidelines
team, who will arrange a replacement with Karcher. The team will call you when
this has been done.
Now, in four sentences, it makes sense at first reading.

See—chapter 3, which shows several ways of breaking up long
sentences.
4—Use words your readers are likely to understand.

Among the tasks they were set in Channel 4’s Child Genius series
(2019), youngsters of 11 or 12 were given a definition and the first letter
of a word of specified length and asked to identify it. Their correct
(and astonishing) answers included flagitious, fulgurous, phillumenist,
and sciamachy. Good for them! These were probably new words to
most adult viewers, including me.
Yet the virtues of a rich vocabulary need to be tempered by restraint
if we want to communicate with a wide audience, because long and
unusual words are less likely to be understood than short and every-
day ones. Obviously, though, some long words like immediately are
common and easy, while some short ones like recuse, redact, and resile
are rare and difficult.
In general, short and everyday words should be your first choice if
you want to be understood by the many not the few. These words will
reduce the readers’ workload and help them get the meaning at first
go. So always examine every word of three or more syllables in your
own writing: is it really the best word for the job?
If you need to use technical terms and the readers may not know
them, give an explanation in brackets, a breakout panel, or a glossary.
Here are some obvious edits that use shorter, simpler, and fewer
words. Instead of:
Our tax team will track the enquiry and provide you with additional assistance
should that be necessary.
—we could say:

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
“You mean a goof?” I queried, wondering how she could have
penetrated the unhappy man’s secret.
“No, a goop. A goop is a man who’s in love with a girl and won’t
tell her so. I am as certain as I am of anything that Ferdinand is fond
of me.”
“Your instinct is unerring. He has just been confiding in me on that
very point.”
“Well, why doesn’t he confide in me, the poor fish?” cried the high-
spirited girl, petulantly flicking a pebble at a passing grasshopper. “I
can’t be expected to fling myself into his arms unless he gives some
sort of a hint that he’s ready to catch me.”
“Would it help if I were to repeat to him the substance of this
conversation of ours?”
“If you breathe a word of it, I’ll never speak to you again,” she
cried. “I’d rather die an awful death than have any man think I
wanted him so badly that I had to send relays of messengers
begging him to marry me.”
I saw her point.
“Then I fear,” I said, gravely, “that there is nothing to be done. One
can only wait and hope. It may be that in the years to come
Ferdinand Dibble will acquire a nice lissom, wristy swing, with the
head kept rigid and the right leg firmly braced and—”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was toying with the hope that some sunny day Ferdinand Dibble
would cease to be a goof.”
“You mean a goop?”
“No, a goof. A goof is a man who—” And I went on to explain the
peculiar psychological difficulties which lay in the way of any
declaration of affection on Ferdinand’s part.
“But I never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life,” she
ejaculated. “Do you mean to say that he is waiting till he is good at
golf before he asks me to marry him?”
“It is not quite so simple as that,” I said sadly. “Many bad golfers
marry, feeling that a wife’s loving solicitude may improve their game.
But they are rugged, thick-skinned men, not sensitive and
introspective, like Ferdinand. Ferdinand has allowed himself to
become morbid. It is one of the chief merits of golf that non-success
at the game induces a certain amount of decent humility, which
keeps a man from pluming himself too much on any petty triumphs
he may achieve in other walks of life; but in all things there is a
happy mean, and with Ferdinand this humility has gone too far. It has
taken all the spirit out of him. He feels crushed and worthless. He is
grateful to caddies when they accept a tip instead of drawing
themselves up to their full height and flinging the money in his face.”
“Then do you mean that things have got to go on like this for
ever?”
I thought for a moment.
“It is a pity,” I said, “that you could not have induced Ferdinand to
go to Marvis Bay for a month or two.”
“Why?”
“Because it seems to me, thinking the thing over, that it is just
possible that Marvis Bay might cure him. At the hotel there he would
find collected a mob of golfers—I used the term in its broadest
sense, to embrace the paralytics and the men who play left-handed
—whom even he would be able to beat. When I was last at Marvis
Bay, the hotel links were a sort of Sargasso Sea into which had
drifted all the pitiful flotsam and jetsam of golf. I have seen things
done on that course at which I shuddered and averted my eyes—
and I am not a weak man. If Ferdinand can polish up his game so as
to go round in a fairly steady hundred and five, I fancy there is hope.
But I understand he is not going to Marvis Bay.”
“Oh yes, he is,” said the girl.
“Indeed! He did not tell me that when we were talking just now.”
“He didn’t know it then. He will when I have had a few words with
him.”
And she walked with firm steps back into the club-house.
It has been well said that there are many kinds of golf, beginning
at the top with the golf of professionals and the best amateurs and
working down through the golf of ossified men to that of Scotch
University professors. Until recently this last was looked upon as the
lowest possible depth; but nowadays, with the growing popularity of
summer hotels, we are able to add a brand still lower, the golf you
find at places like Marvis Bay.
To Ferdinand Dibble, coming from a club where the standard of
play was rather unusually high, Marvis Bay was a revelation, and for
some days after his arrival there he went about dazed, like a man
who cannot believe it is really true. To go out on the links at this
summer resort was like entering a new world. The hotel was full of
stout, middle-aged men, who, after a misspent youth devoted to
making money, had taken to a game at which real proficiency can
only be acquired by those who start playing in their cradles and keep
their weight down. Out on the course each morning you could see
representatives of every nightmare style that was ever invented.
There was the man who seemed to be attempting to deceive his ball
and lull it into a false security by looking away from it and then
making a lightning slash in the apparent hope of catching it off its
guard. There was the man who wielded his mid-iron like one killing
snakes. There was the man who addressed his ball as if he were
stroking a cat, the man who drove as if he were cracking a whip, the
man who brooded over each shot like one whose heart is bowed
down by bad news from home, and the man who scooped with his
mashie as if he were ladling soup. By the end of the first week
Ferdinand Dibble was the acknowledged champion of the place. He
had gone through the entire menagerie like a bullet through a cream
puff.
First, scarcely daring to consider the possibility of success, he had
taken on the man who tried to catch his ball off its guard and had
beaten him five up and four to play. Then, with gradually growing
confidence, he tackled in turn the Cat-Stroker, the Whip-Cracker, the
Heart Bowed Down, and the Soup-Scooper, and walked all over their
faces with spiked shoes. And as these were the leading local
amateurs, whose prowess the octogenarians and the men who went
round in bath-chairs vainly strove to emulate, Ferdinand Dibble was
faced on the eighth morning of his visit by the startling fact that he
had no more worlds to conquer. He was monarch of all he surveyed,
and, what is more, had won his first trophy, the prize in the great
medal-play handicap tournament, in which he had nosed in ahead of
the field by two strokes, edging out his nearest rival, a venerable old
gentleman, by means of a brilliant and unexpected four on the last
hole. The prize was a handsome pewter mug, about the size of the
old oaken bucket, and Ferdinand used to go to his room immediately
after dinner to croon over it like a mother over her child.
You are wondering, no doubt, why, in these circumstances, he did
not take advantage of the new spirit of exhilarated pride which had
replaced his old humility and instantly propose to Barbara Medway. I
will tell you. He did not propose to Barbara because Barbara was not
there. At the last moment she had been detained at home to nurse a
sick parent and had been compelled to postpone her visit for a
couple of weeks. He could, no doubt, have proposed in one of the
daily letters which he wrote to her, but somehow, once he started
writing, he found that he used up so much space describing his best
shots on the links that day that it was difficult to squeeze in a
declaration of undying passion. After all, you can hardly cram that
sort of thing into a postscript.
He decided, therefore, to wait till she arrived, and meanwhile
pursued his conquering course. The longer he waited the better, in
one way, for every morning and afternoon that passed was adding
new layers to his self-esteem. Day by day in every way he grew
chestier and chestier.
Meanwhile, however, dark clouds were gathering. Sullen

mutterings were to be heard in corners of the hotel lounge, and the
spirit of revolt was abroad. For Ferdinand’s chestiness had not
escaped the notice of his defeated rivals. There is nobody so chesty
as a normally unchesty man who suddenly becomes chesty, and I
am sorry to say that the chestiness which had come to Ferdinand
was the aggressive type of chestiness which breeds enemies. He
had developed a habit of holding the game up in order to give his
opponent advice. The Whip-Cracker had not forgiven, and never
would forgive, his well-meant but galling criticism of his back-swing.
The Scooper, who had always scooped since the day when, at the
age of sixty-four, he subscribed to the Correspondence Course
which was to teach him golf in twelve lessons by mail, resented
being told by a snip of a boy that the mashie-stroke should be a
smooth, unhurried swing. The Snake-Killer—But I need not weary
you with a detailed recital of these men’s grievances; it is enough to
say that they all had it in for Ferdinand, and one night, after dinner,
they met in the lounge to decide what was to be done about it.
A nasty spirit was displayed by all.
“A mere lad telling me how to use my mashie!” growled the
Scooper. “Smooth and unhurried my left eyeball! I get it up, don’t I?
Well, what more do you want?”
“I keep telling him that mine is the old, full St. Andrew swing,”
muttered the Whip-Cracker, between set teeth, “but he won’t listen to
me.”
“He ought to be taken down a peg or two,” hissed the Snake-Killer.
It is not easy to hiss a sentence without a single “s” in it, and the fact
that he succeeded in doing so shows to what a pitch of emotion the
man had been goaded by Ferdinand’s maddening air of superiority.
“Yes, but what can we do?” queried an octogenarian, when this
last remark had been passed on to him down his ear-trumpet.
“That’s the trouble,” sighed the Scooper. “What can we do?” And
there was a sorrowful shaking of heads.
“I know!” exclaimed the Cat-Stroker, who had not hitherto spoken.
He was a lawyer, and a man of subtle and sinister mind. “I have it!
There’s a boy in my office—young Parsloe—who could beat this man
Dibble hollow. I’ll wire him to come down here and we’ll spring him
on this fellow and knock some of the conceit out of him.”
There was a chorus of approval.
“But are you sure he can beat him?” asked the Snake-Killer,
anxiously. “It would never do to make a mistake.”
“Of course I’m sure,” said the Cat-Stroker. “George Parsloe once
went round in ninety-four.”
“Many changes there have been since ninety-four,” said the
octogenarian, nodding sagely. “Ah, many, many changes. None of
these motor-cars then, tearing about and killing—”
Kindly hands led him off to have an egg-and-milk, and the
remaining conspirators returned to the point at issue with bent
brows.
“Ninety-four?” said the Scooper, incredulously. “Do you mean
counting every stroke?”
“Counting every stroke.”
“Not conceding himself any putts?”
“Not one.”
“Wire him to come at once,” said the meeting with one voice.
That night the Cat-Stroker approached Ferdinand, smooth, subtle,
lawyer-like.
“Oh, Dibble,” he said, “just the man I wanted to see. Dibble, there’s
a young friend of mine coming down here who goes in for golf a little.
George Parsloe is his name. I was wondering if you could spare time
to give him a game. He is just a novice, you know.”
“I shall be delighted to play a round with him,” said Ferdinand,
kindly.
“He might pick up a pointer or two from watching you,” said the
Cat-Stroker.
“True, true,” said Ferdinand.
“Then I’ll introduce you when he shows up.”
“Delighted,” said Ferdinand.
He was in excellent humour that night, for he had had a letter from
Barbara saying that she was arriving on the next day but one.
It was Ferdinand’s healthy custom of a morning to get up in good

time and take a dip in the sea before breakfast. On the morning of
the day of Barbara’s arrival, he arose, as usual, donned his flannels,
took a good look at the cup, and started out. It was a fine, fresh
morning, and he glowed both externally and internally. As he crossed
the links, for the nearest route to the water was through the fairway
of the seventh, he was whistling happily and rehearsing in his mind
the opening sentences of his proposal. For it was his firm resolve
that night after dinner to ask Barbara to marry him. He was
proceeding over the smooth turf without a care in the world, when
there was a sudden cry of “Fore!” and the next moment a golf ball,
missing him by inches, sailed up the fairway and came to a rest fifty
yards from where he stood. He looked round and observed a figure
coming towards him from the tee.
The distance from the tee was fully a hundred and thirty yards.
Add fifty to that, and you have a hundred and eighty yards. No such
drive had been made on the Marvis Bay links since their foundation,
and such is the generous spirit of the true golfer that Ferdinand’s first
emotion, after the not inexcusable spasm of panic caused by the
hum of the ball past his ear, was one of cordial admiration. By some
kindly miracle, he supposed, one of his hotel acquaintances had
been permitted for once in his life to time a drive right. It was only
when the other man came up that there began to steal over him a
sickening apprehension. The faces of all those who hewed divots on
the hotel course were familiar to him, and the fact that this fellow was
a stranger seemed to point with dreadful certainty to his being the
man he had agreed to play.
“Sorry,” said the man. He was a tall, strikingly handsome youth,
with brown eyes and a dark moustache.
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Ferdinand. “Er—do you always drive like
that?”
“Well, I generally get a bit longer ball, but I’m off my drive this
morning. It’s lucky I came out and got this practice. I’m playing a
match to-morrow with a fellow named Dibble, who’s a local
champion, or something.”
“Me,” said Ferdinand, humbly.
“Eh? Oh, you?” Mr. Parsloe eyed him appraisingly. “Well, may the
best man win.”
As this was precisely what Ferdinand was afraid was going to
happen, he nodded in a sickly manner and tottered off to his bathe.
The magic had gone out of the morning. The sun still shone, but in a
silly, feeble way; and a cold and depressing wind had sprung up. For
Ferdinand’s inferiority complex, which had seemed cured for ever,
was back again, doing business at the old stand.
How sad it is in this life that the moment to which we have looked
forward with the most glowing anticipation so often turns out on
arrival, flat, cold, and disappointing. For ten days Barbara Medway
had been living for that meeting with Ferdinand, when, getting out of
the train, she would see him popping about on the horizon with the
love-light sparkling in his eyes and words of devotion trembling on
his lips. The poor girl never doubted for an instant that he would
unleash his pent-up emotions inside the first five minutes, and her
only worry was lest he should give an embarrassing publicity to the
sacred scene by falling on his knees on the station platform.
“Well, here I am at last,” she cried gaily.
“Hullo!” said Ferdinand, with a twisted smile.
The girl looked at him, chilled. How could she know that his
peculiar manner was due entirely to the severe attack of cold feet
resultant upon his meeting with George Parsloe that morning? The
interpretation which she placed upon it was that he was not glad to
see her. If he had behaved like this before, she would, of course,
have put it down to ingrowing goofery, but now she had his written
statements to prove that for the last ten days his golf had been one
long series of triumphs.
“I got your letters,” she said, persevering bravely.
“I thought you would,” said Ferdinand, absently.
“You seem to have been doing wonders.”
“Yes.”
There was a silence.
“Have a nice journey?” said Ferdinand.
“Very,” said Barbara.
She spoke coldly, for she was madder than a wet hen. She saw it
all now. In the ten days since they had parted, his love, she realised,
had waned. Some other girl, met in the romantic surroundings of this
picturesque resort, had supplanted her in his affections. She knew
how quickly Cupid gets off the mark at a summer hotel, and for an
instant she blamed herself for ever having been so ivory-skulled as
to let him come to this place alone. Then regret was swallowed up in
wrath, and she became so glacial that Ferdinand, who had been on
the point of telling her the secret of his gloom, retired into his shell
and conversation during the drive to the hotel never soared above a
certain level. Ferdinand said the sunshine was nice and Barbara said
yes, it was nice, and Ferdinand said it looked pretty on the water,
and Barbara said yes, it did look pretty on the water, and Ferdinand
said he hoped it was not going to rain, and Barbara said yes, it would
be a pity if it rained. And then there was another lengthy silence.
“How is my uncle?” asked Barbara at last.
I omitted to mention that the individual to whom I have referred as
the Cat-Stroker was Barbara’s mother’s brother, and her host at
Marvis Bay.
“Your uncle?”
“His name is Tuttle. Have you met him?”
“Oh yes. I’ve seen a good deal of him. He has got a friend staying
with him,” said Ferdinand, his mind returning to the matter nearest
his heart. “A fellow named Parsloe.”
“Oh, is George Parsloe here? How jolly!”
“Do you know him?” barked Ferdinand, hollowly. He would not
have supposed that anything could have added to his existing
depression, but he was conscious now of having slipped a few rungs
farther down the ladder of gloom. There had been a horribly joyful
ring in her voice. Ah, well, he reflected morosely, how like life it all
was! We never know what the morrow may bring forth. We strike a
good patch and are beginning to think pretty well of ourselves, and
along comes a George Parsloe.
“Of course I do,” said Barbara. “Why, there he is.”
The cab had drawn up at the door of the hotel, and on the porch
George Parsloe was airing his graceful person. To Ferdinand’s
fevered eye he looked like a Greek god, and his inferiority complex
began to exhibit symptoms of elephantiasis. How could he compete
at love or golf with a fellow who looked as if he had stepped out of
the movies and considered himself off his drive when he did a
hundred and eighty yards?
“Geor-gee!” cried Barbara, blithely. “Hullo, George!”
“Why, hullo, Barbara!”
They fell into pleasant conversation, while Ferdinand hung
miserably about in the offing. And presently, feeling that his society
was not essential to their happiness, he slunk away.
George Parsloe dined at the Cat-Stroker’s table that night, and it
was with George Parsloe that Barbara roamed in the moonlight after
dinner. Ferdinand, after a profitless hour at the billiard-table, went
early to his room. But not even the rays of the moon, glinting on his
cup, could soothe the fever in his soul. He practised putting sombrely
into his tooth-glass for a while; then, going to bed, fell at last into a
troubled sleep.
Barbara slept late the next morning and breakfasted in her room.
Coming down towards noon, she found a strange emptiness in the
hotel. It was her experience of summer hotels that a really fine day
like this one was the cue for half the inhabitants to collect in the
lounge, shut all the windows, and talk about conditions in the jute
industry. To her surprise, though the sun was streaming down from a
cloudless sky, the only occupant of the lounge was the octogenarian
with the ear-trumpet. She observed that he was chuckling to himself
in a senile manner.
“Good morning,” she said, politely, for she had made his
acquaintance on the previous evening.
“Hey?” said the octogenarian, suspending his chuckling and
getting his trumpet into position.
“I said ‘Good morning!’” roared Barbara into the receiver.
“Hey?”
“Good morning!”
“Ah! Yes, it’s a very fine morning, a very fine morning. If it wasn’t
for missing my bun and glass of milk at twelve sharp,” said the
octogenarian, “I’d be down on the links. That’s where I’d be, down on
the links. If it wasn’t for missing my bun and glass of milk.”
This refreshment arriving at this moment he dismantled the radio
outfit and began to restore his tissues.
“Watching the match,” he explained, pausing for a moment in his
bun-mangling.
“What match?”
The octogenarian sipped his milk.
“What match?” repeated Barbara.
“Hey?”
“What match?”
The octogenarian began to chuckle again and nearly swallowed a
crumb the wrong way.
“Take some of the conceit out of him,” he gurgled.
“Out of who?” asked Barbara, knowing perfectly well that she
should have said “whom.”
“Yes,” said the octogenarian.
“Who is conceited?”
“Ah! This young fellow, Dibble. Very conceited. I saw it in his eye
from the first, but nobody would listen to me. Mark my words, I said,
that boy needs taking down a peg or two. Well, he’s going to be this
morning. Your uncle wired to young Parsloe to come down, and he’s
arranged a match between them. Dibble—” Here the octogenarian
choked again and had to rinse himself out with milk, “Dibble doesn’t
know that Parsloe once went round in ninety-four!”
“What?”
Everything seemed to go black to Barbara. Through a murky mist
she appeared to be looking at a negro octogenarian, sipping ink.
Then her eyes cleared, and she found herself clutching for support at
the back of the chair. She understood now. She realised why
Ferdinand had been so distrait, and her whole heart went out to him
in a spasm of maternal pity. How she had wronged him!
“Take some of the conceit out of him,” the octogenarian was
mumbling, and Barbara felt a sudden sharp loathing for the old man.
For two pins she could have dropped a beetle in his milk. Then the
need for action roused her. What action? She did not know. All she
knew was that she must act.
“Oh!” she cried.
“Hey?” said the octogenarian, bringing his trumpet to the ready.
But Barbara had gone.
It was not far to the links, and Barbara covered the distance on
flying feet. She reached the club-house, but the course was empty
except for the Scooper, who was preparing to drive off the first tee. In
spite of the fact that something seemed to tell her subconsciously
that this was one of the sights she ought not to miss, the girl did not
wait to watch. Assuming that the match had started soon after
breakfast, it must by now have reached one of the holes on the
second nine. She ran down the hill, looking to left and right, and was
presently aware of a group of spectators clustered about a green in
the distance. As she hurried towards them they moved away, and
now she could see Ferdinand advancing to the next tee. With a thrill
that shook her whole body she realised that he had the honour. So
he must have won one hole, at any rate. Then she saw her uncle.
“How are they?” she gasped.
Mr. Tuttle seemed moody. It was apparent that things were not
going altogether to his liking.
“All square at the fifteenth,” he replied, gloomily.
“All square!”
“Yes. Young Parsloe,” said Mr. Tuttle with a sour look in the
direction of that lissom athlete, “doesn’t seem to be able to do a thing
right on the greens. He has been putting like a sheep with the botts.”
From the foregoing remark of Mr. Tuttle you will, no doubt, have
gleaned at least a clue to the mystery of how Ferdinand Dibble had
managed to hold his long-driving adversary up to the fifteenth green,
but for all that you will probably consider that some further
explanation of this amazing state of affairs is required. Mere bad
putting on the part of George Parsloe is not, you feel, sufficient to
cover the matter entirely. You are right. There was another very
important factor in the situation—to wit, that by some extraordinary
chance Ferdinand Dibble had started right off from the first tee,
playing the game of a lifetime. Never had he made such drives,
never chipped his chip so shrewdly.
About Ferdinand’s driving there was as a general thing a fatal
stiffness and over-caution which prevented success. And with his
chip-shots he rarely achieved accuracy owing to his habit of rearing
his head like the lion of the jungle just before the club struck the ball.
But to-day he had been swinging with a careless freedom, and his
chips had been true and clean. The thing had puzzled him all the
way round. It had not elated him, for, owing to Barbara’s aloofness
and the way in which she had gambolled about George Parsloe like
a young lamb in the springtime, he was in too deep a state of
dejection to be elated by anything. And now, suddenly, in a flash of
clear vision, he perceived the reason why he had been playing so
well to-day. It was just because he was not elated. It was simply
because he was so profoundly miserable.
That was what Ferdinand told himself as he stepped off the
sixteenth, after hitting a screamer down the centre of the fairway,
and I am convinced that he was right. Like so many indifferent
golfers, Ferdinand Dibble had always made the game hard for
himself by thinking too much. He was a deep student of the works of
the masters, and whenever he prepared to play a stroke he had a
complete mental list of all the mistakes which it was possible to
make. He would remember how Taylor had warned against dipping
the right shoulder, how Vardon had inveighed against any movement
of the head; he would recall how Ray had mentioned the tendency to
snatch back the club, how Braid had spoken sadly of those who sin
against their better selves by stiffening the muscles and heaving.
The consequence was that when, after waggling in a frozen
manner till mere shame urged him to take some definite course of
action, he eventually swung, he invariably proceeded to dip his right
shoulder, stiffen his muscles, heave, and snatch back the club, at the
same time raising his head sharply as in the illustrated plate (“Some
Frequent Faults of Beginners—No. 3—Lifting the Bean”) facing page
thirty-four of James Braid’s Golf Without Tears. To-day he had been
so preoccupied with his broken heart that he had made his shots
absently, almost carelessly, with the result that at least one in every
three had been a lallapaloosa.
Meanwhile, George Parsloe had driven off and the match was
progressing. George was feeling a little flustered by now. He had
been given to understand that this bird Dibble was a hundred-at-his-
best man, and all the way round the fellow had been reeling off fives
in great profusion, and had once actually got a four. True, there had
been an occasional six, and even a seven, but that did not alter the
main fact that the man was making the dickens of a game of it. With
the haughty spirit of one who had once done a ninety-four, George
Parsloe had anticipated being at least three up at the turn. Instead of
which he had been two down, and had to fight strenuously to draw
level.
Nevertheless, he drove steadily and well, and would certainly have
won the hole had it not been for his weak and sinful putting. The
same defect caused him to halve the seventeenth, after being on in
two, with Ferdinand wandering in the desert and only reaching the
green with his fourth. Then, however, Ferdinand holed out from a
distance of seven yards, getting a five; which George’s three putts
just enabled him to equal.
Barbara had watched the proceedings with a beating heart. At first
she had looked on from afar; but now, drawn as by a magnet, she
approached the tee. Ferdinand was driving off. She held her breath.
Ferdinand held his breath. And all around one could see their
respective breaths being held by George Parsloe, Mr. Tuttle, and the
enthralled crowd of spectators. It was a moment of the acutest
tension, and it was broken by the crack of Ferdinand’s driver as it
met the ball and sent it hopping along the ground for a mere thirty
yards. At this supreme crisis in the match Ferdinand Dibble had
topped.
George Parsloe teed up his ball. There was a smile of quiet
satisfaction on his face. He snuggled the driver in his hands, and
gave it a preliminary swish. This, felt George Parsloe, was where the
happy ending came. He could drive as he had never driven before.
He would so drive that it would take his opponent at least three shots
to catch up with him. He drew back his club with infinite caution,
poised it at the top of the swing—
“I always wonder—” said a clear, girlish voice, ripping the silence
like the explosion of a bomb.
George Parsloe started. His club wobbled. It descended. The ball
trickled into the long grass in front of the tee. There was a grim
pause.
“You were saying, Miss Medway—” said George Parsloe, in a
small, flat voice.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Barbara. “I’m afraid I put you off.”
“A little, perhaps. Possibly the merest trifle. But you were saying
you wondered about something. Can I be of any assistance?”
“I was only saying,” said Barbara, “that I always wonder why tees
are called tees.”
George Parsloe swallowed once or twice. He also blinked a little
feverishly. His eyes had a dazed, staring expression.
“I’m afraid I cannot tell you off-hand,” he said, “but I will make a
point of consulting some good encyclopædia at the earliest
opportunity.”
“Thank you so much.”
“Not at all. It will be a pleasure. In case you were thinking of
inquiring at the moment when I am putting why greens are called
greens, may I venture the suggestion now that it is because they are
green?”
And, so saying, George Parsloe stalked to his ball and found it
nestling in the heart of some shrub of which, not being a botanist, I
cannot give you the name. It was a close-knit, adhesive shrub, and it
twined its tentacles so loving around George Parsloe’s niblick that he
missed his first shot altogether. His second made the ball rock, and
his third dislodged it. Playing a full swing with his brassie and being
by now a mere cauldron of seething emotions he missed his fourth.
His fifth came to within a few inches of Ferdinand’s drive, and he
picked it up and hurled it from him into the rough as if it had been
something venomous.
“Your hole and match,” said George Parsloe, thinly.
Ferdinand Dibble sat beside the glittering ocean. He had hurried

off the course with swift strides the moment George Parsloe had
spoken those bitter words. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts.
They were mixed thoughts. For a moment joy at the reflection that
he had won a tough match came irresistibly to the surface, only to
sink again as he remembered that life, whatever its triumphs, could
hold nothing for him now that Barbara Medway loved another.
“Mr. Dibble!”
He looked up. She was standing at his side. He gulped and rose to
his feet.
“Yes?”
There was a silence.
“Doesn’t the sun look pretty on the water?” said Barbara.
Ferdinand groaned. This was too much.
“Leave me,” he said, hollowly. “Go back to your Parsloe, the man
with whom you walked in the moonlight beside this same water.”
“Well, why shouldn’t I walk with Mr. Parsloe in the moonlight
beside this same water?” demanded Barbara, with spirit.
“I never said,” replied Ferdinand, for he was a fair man at heart,
“that you shouldn’t walk with Mr. Parsloe beside this same water. I
simply said you did walk with Mr. Parsloe beside this same water.”
“I’ve a perfect right to walk with Mr. Parsloe beside this same
water,” persisted Barbara. “He and I are old friends.”
Ferdinand groaned again.
“Exactly! There you are! As I suspected. Old friends. Played
together as children, and what not, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“No, we didn’t. I’ve only known him five years. But he is engaged
to be married to my greatest chum, so that draws us together.”
Ferdinand uttered a strangled cry.
“Parsloe engaged to be married!”
“Yes. The wedding takes place next month.”
“But look here.” Ferdinand’s forehead was wrinkled. He was
thinking tensely. “Look here,” said Ferdinand, a close reasoner. “If
Parsloe’s engaged to your greatest chum, he can’t be in love with
you.”
“No.”
“And you aren’t in love with him?”
“No.”
“Then, by gad,” said Ferdinand, “how about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Will you marry me?” bellowed Ferdinand.
“Yes.”
“You will?”
“Of course I will.”
“Darling!” cried Ferdinand.
“There is only one thing that bothers me a bit,” said Ferdinand,

thoughtfully, as they strolled together over the scented meadows,
while in the trees above them a thousand birds trilled Mendelssohn’s
Wedding March.
“What is that?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Ferdinand. “The fact is, I’ve just discovered
the great secret of golf. You can’t play a really hot game unless
you’re so miserable that you don’t worry over your shots. Take the
case of a chip-shot, for instance. If you’re really wretched, you don’t
care where the ball is going and so you don’t raise your head to see.
Grief automatically prevents pressing and over-swinging. Look at the
top-notchers. Have you ever seen a happy pro?”
“No. I don’t think I have.”
“Well, then!”
“But pros are all Scotchmen,” argued Barbara.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m sure I’m right. And the darned thing is that
I’m going to be so infernally happy all the rest of my life that I
suppose my handicap will go up to thirty or something.”
Barbara squeezed his hand lovingly.
“Don’t worry, precious,” she said, soothingly. “It will be all right. I
am a woman, and, once we are married, I shall be able to think of at
least a hundred ways of snootering you to such an extent that you’ll
be fit to win the Amateur Championship.”
“You will?” said Ferdinand, anxiously. “You’re sure?”
“Quite, quite sure, dearest,” said Barbara.
“My angel!” said Ferdinand.
He folded her in his arms, using the interlocking grip.
CHAPTER II
HIGH STAKES
The summer day was drawing to a close. Over the terrace outside
the club-house the chestnut trees threw long shadows, and such
bees as still lingered in the flower-beds had the air of tired business
men who are about ready to shut up the office and go off to dinner
and a musical comedy. The Oldest Member, stirring in his favourite
chair, glanced at his watch and yawned.
As he did so, from the neighbourhood of the eighteenth green,
hidden from his view by the slope of the ground, there came
suddenly a medley of shrill animal cries, and he deduced that some
belated match must just have reached a finish. His surmise was
correct. The babble of voices drew nearer, and over the brow of the
hill came a little group of men. Two, who appeared to be the
ringleaders in the affair, were short and stout. One was cheerful and
the other dejected. The rest of the company consisted of friends and
adherents; and one of these, a young man who seemed to be
amused, strolled to where the Oldest Member sat.
“What,” inquired the Sage, “was all the shouting for?”
The young man sank into a chair and lighted a cigarette.
“Perkins and Broster,” he said, “were all square at the
seventeenth, and they raised the stakes to fifty pounds. They were
both on the green in seven, and Perkins had a two-foot putt to halve
the match. He missed it by six inches. They play pretty high, those
two.”
“It is a curious thing,” said the Oldest Member, “that men whose
golf is of a kind that makes hardened caddies wince always do. The
more competent a player, the smaller the stake that contents him. It
is only when you get down into the submerged tenth of the golfing
world that you find the big gambling. However, I would not call fifty

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The Oxford Handbook of English Grammar Bas Aarts

1 Planning comes first 1

26 Writing better instructions 229

Appendix 1: Commonest words 301

My thanks go to those who have given help and advice on parts of

About the author

University, he edited the student newspaper Guild and City Gazette

What’s the problem?

This style of writing is not trivial or accidental. It acts as a subtle invita-

Visiting a school, I saw a notice in the reception area saying:

This exemplifies the widespread problem of posh, pretentious fog.

A notice in the rear window of a minibus for disabled people also

In more relaxed English, it could have said:

That’s a single unpunctuated sentence of 132 words, without even a full

So many blunders (including the date it was written) in so short a

The student asks me whether plethora and gravamen—along with

like to complete the included questionnaire. It includes sentences of

Texts like this make readers halt, backtrack, and—often—give up.

When trying to understand old-style legislation, the bench has

Starting points xiii

of Lord Justice Harman’s famous judgment in Davy v Leeds

At a parish council meeting in 2006, councillor Alan Wilkinson said a

The 18,000-word report he complained about was called ‘Sustainability

The coroner’s final report included a section headed The use of

Of course, what is plain English to one person may be obscure to

The average sentence length—32 words—may be a bit high, but a

Guidelines not rules

Starting points xvii

What’s meant by plain English?

So this means authors need to make informed judgements about

Starting points xix

Good information does not lie, fudge, or tell half-truths, especially

Does plain English work?

In a further study, the same instructions were given in both speech

UK consumer contracts—plain English required by law

Starting points xxi

to terms used by traders in transactions with consumers. A separate

Starting points xxiii

How you may want to use this book

The thirty guidelines

The thirty guidelines xxv

Summary of the twelve main guidelines

1—Plan before you write.

2—Organize your material so readers can see

Summary of the twelve main guidelines xxvii

3—Make the average sentence length 15–20 words.

xxviii Summary of the twelve main guidelines

Now, in four sentences, it makes sense at first reading.

4—Use words your readers are likely to understand.

—we could say:

1 Planning comes first 1

26 Writing better instructions 229

Appendix 1: Commonest words 301