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12 January, 2007
What is plain language?

I enjoy my work. For me, there is a certain pleasure in demonstrating to people that instead of "allocating funds for a project on a go-forward basis", they can just "include the project in the budget from now on."

That's just a small-scale example of the plain-language work I do. Plain language is becoming more and more important in the 21st century. For example, did you know that a law does not have to be written in hard-to-understand legalese to be legally binding? Plain language has the same legal weight as legalese! But why bother writing the law in plain language? The only people the law affects are everyone in Canada!

Remember all the huge white collar crime scandals that happened a few years ago? Enron, Worldcom, and the like? Regular, everyday, working people lost all of their life savings to criminals in those scandals. How can criminals get away with stuff like that? By hiding their crimes.

But where do such criminals hide their crimes? They don't have bodies to bury, weapons to conceal, or alibis to fabricate. They have only facts and lies. They must produce records of where their money is coming from and going. A "paper trail".

Have you ever heard the saying that the best place to hide something is in plain sight? Well, when people don't understand the language you speak, it is easy to hide information in documents you place in their very hands. What's the point of writing something if nobody can understand what you've written? The point is to make people think that you're doing what you're required to do. That you're fulfilling your duties.

In the digital information age, this concept is very significant. How would you feel, living in the iron age with no access at all to iron? When humans became able to control fire, it must have been terrible to be left out of that secret! Power today lies in information. If you can't understand the information that controls your life, you can't control your life.

I just read in the Edmonton Journal that "U.S. investors will soon have a new scorecard designed to lay out in plain English just how much pay and perks are being lavished on top executives at public companies." Well, that's exciting. I'm not an investing guru, but I'm guessing that when someone is considering investing in a company (that is, buying their stocks), they'd like to know how much of its profits the company is using to become even more successful (and thus raising stock value) and how much is going into obscenely large executive salaries and perks that don't benefit investors at all. Are profits going to investors or to executives?

Apparently the American Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) thinks it's important for average investors—who don't understand fancy financial jargon—to know the answer to this question.

Canada doesn't have a national securities-regulating body. The Albertan one just got shaken up over allegations of mismanagement, so, sadly, there's no telling when plain language will be a priority for it. But the British Columbia Securities Commission has seen plain language as very important for years. And others are getting on board.

Plain language is about leveling the playing field for all players. It's about preventing deception, fraud, and injustice. And, if steps by the SEC are any indication, plain language is not just a silly socialist trend. The ground is shifting. If you're disgusted by the fact that in one hour top Canadian executives make the equivalent of the national average annual salary, then the shift is in your favour.

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