“[D]irect and precise language, if people could be persuaded to try it, would make conversation more interesting, which is no small thing; it would help to substitute facts for bluster, also no small thing; and it would promote the practice of organized thought and even of occasional silence, which would be an immeasurable blessing.”—Edwin Newman, Strictly Speaking
Let’s face it: Plain speaking is a lost art, and plain English today is almost as rare as $1 for regular at the gas pump. Thanks to professional jargon that has permeated our lives, direct, precise language is a rarity indeed.
One of the fields that seems to have made it a goal to ignore plain English is the law. Over the past few decades, attempts have been made to remedy this, with a few successful inroads. In 1989, the State Bar of California’s Board of Governors unanimously adopted a resolution calling for lawyers and legal organizations to simplify forms, documents, and language used in the practice of law. But they were neither alone nor particularly farsighted. In the 1960s, consumer advocacy groups stimulated legislation to ensure that government and business produced documents that the public could read and understand. Presidents Nixon, Carter, and Clinton directed the federal government to use plain language in their documents.
Michigan overhauled its criminal law instructions in the 1990s, and Delaware released plain English civil instructions in 1997. Oregon, Arizona, and Alaska use more plain English instructions than most. Currently, a statewide task force of the Judicial Council of California is attempting to simplify jury instructions. It’s probably a smart move, if the goal is to help ordinary citizens understand those instructions. And there is some proof that using plain English makes a difference. For example, in a study of jury instructions that were presented to jurors orally, the plain language versions improved comprehension from 45% to 59%, for an improvement of about 31% over the original. (Robert P. Charrow & Veda R. Charrow, Making Legal Language Understandable: A Psycholinguistic Study of Jury Instructions, 79 Colum. L. Rev. 1306, 1333, 1370 tbl. 14 (1979).) In still another study of jury instructions—two different sets—plain language improved the level of comprehension from 51% and 65% to 80% on both sets. (Amiram Elwork et al., Making Jury Instructions Understandable 45-46 (1982).)
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