Keeping it simple
Sen. Miriam Santiago last week pushed for the passage of a Plain Language Act to “improve the effectiveness and accountability of government agencies to the public by promoting clear communications that the public can understand and use.’’ Santiago, who is one of the more articulate members of the Senate, said that by using plain language, government officials would be able to reach out to more people inside and outside of government.
Her advice should be addressed principally to lawyers and technocrats, as well as members of Congress, a big percentage of whom are lawyers. Let’s take a look at a legal definition given as an example by Rudolf Flesch, an American readability expert:
“Ultimate consumer means a person or group of persons, generally constituting a domestic household, who purchase eggs generally at the individual stores of retailers or purchase and receive deliveries of eggs at the place of abode of the individual or domestic household from producers or retail route sellers and who use such eggs for their consumption as food.’’
Flesch said this long sentence could be boiled down to a sentence of just 10 words: “Ultimate consumers are people who buy eggs to eat them.’’
This is an American example, but we are sure there must be thousands of similar long, complex sentences in Philippine laws and regulations and legal and business documents which make it hard for ordinary people to read and understand official issuances and documents.
Many people have observed that the most notorious writers of long, involved sentences are lawyers. Flesch said: “The reason is …they won’t let the reader escape. Behind each interminable legal sentence seems to be the idea that all citizens will turn into criminals as soon as they find a loophole in the law; if a sentence ends before everything is said, they will stop reading right there and jump to the chance of breaking the rule that follows after the period.’’
Martin Cutts, another advocate of plain English, defines it as “the writing and setting out of essential information in a way that gives a cooperative, motivated person a good chance of understanding the document at first reading, and in the same sense that the writer meant it to be understood.”’
Plain English is doubly important because in the first place English is a foreign language in our country; make it hard to understand and you double the difficulty of understanding it for the ordinary citizen.
Research has shown that documents written in plain English can improve readers’ comprehension. In an American study of instructions given orally to jurors, the plain versions improved comprehension by 31 percent, from 45 percent to 59. We do not know of a local study of the use of plain Filipino or plain English in the Philippines, but we believe it must improve comprehension.
We endorse the measure introduced by Santiago because clearer, more understandable laws, regulations and documents will improve the people’s access to benefits and services, justice and fair deal. Cutts said, “If people understand what they are asked to read and sign, they can make better choices and know exactly what they are letting themselves in for.’’
People hardly realize that simple, easily readable and understandable language mean time and effort saved by readers, especially government officials and professionals and specialists who have to do a tremendous amount of reading every day.
It is good that President Benigno Aquino III is using plain, simple Filipino most of the time in his speeches and other pronouncements. That way he communicates better with the people.
Many government officials still use English in both written and oral communication. They will communicate better, and, as Santiago says, improve the effectiveness and accountability of government agencies, if they use plain language.
