The battle against jargon

The Plain English Campaign people have been taking the fight to purveyors of confusing writing and ridiculous jargon for years; I'm with them all the way. I particularly like the fact that a lot of what they talk about nowadays involves the Web. They give a Web Award every year and its great to see that this year and in the recent past, plenty of public sector organisations have been getting in on the act.

Having previously worked for a county council, its easy to see the problem from both sides. The people whose services you are administering (and they're major services remember: education, environment, roads) are sometimes at the end of their tether, being force fed huge long forms and booklets with complicated terms, full of jargon and unusable to the point of frustration. The people inside the council/public sector organisation are battling with a huge number of departments, long-established (often outdated) ways of doing things and, most tellingly, people producing material for public consumption who have never actually been taught how to write clearly and concisely.

Before you start getting on your local council's back, I stand up for them in that the majority are really trying to do something about their image as stuffy, jargon-heavy organisations; indeed, many councils, at least in the UK, have better organised and accountable Web and publication teams than many private sector organisations.