to think this level of dumbing down has to be a joke?

[mayorquimby]

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7705922.stm

in a nut shell, a number of local councils want to ban their staff from using latin terms because it might confuse people.
Now i'm not talking about quoting the republic but simple terms like "vice versa" "QED" or the abbreviation "e.g.".
i mean FFS surely this is just pandering to morons.

[edam]

It's a good idea for councils, or anyone who has to communicate with the public, to run stuff past the Plain English Campaign. I once got them to check some GP practice leaflets which they reckoned demanded a reading age of 16. No use at all.

Broadsheet newspapers generally come out as demanding a reading age of about 12 - anything more than that and you are really limiting the number of people who will pay attention to your message, let alone comprehend it.

Latin is a side issue. As catsmother says, it's the generally poor standard of writing by officialdom that really needs to be tackled.

I am quite fond of classic civil-service language, though. Beautifully constructed in order to confuse anyone who they thought should be left in the dark...

[mrsgboring]

It is surely more cost-effective to translate documents into several community languages than to employ council workers to try to explain indvidually to the people who come in and say they don't understand the communication (or ignore it and fail to comply with its contents, necessitating further proceedings). Surely?

Those people who think there is hardly anyone in the land who would be baffled by "e.g." should seriously get out more.

[rebelmum1]

You could get a job at the council ..

[rebelmum1]

I can see why you struggled

[OrmIrian]

one word out of 6....

[OrmIrian]

'one word of of 6' I meant to say

[OrmIrian]

Management speak is just as bad.

Once had a meeting - entirely senior management - and one word out of. If people find existing language hard to deal with, why introduce more when good usable words exist already.

[rebelmum1]

yes there are cases where councils have also taken time and expense translating all their docs into many different languages ..

[onager]

I think the problem might be "particularly if English is not their first language"

Can we assume that Welsh will be banned too as that must cause confusion.

[rebelmum1]

my dog!

[stillstanding]

If you don't put the full stops in e.g. spellcheck changes it to egg. Which means that many of my docs reference eggs alas ...

[Upwind]

"told I had a 'hazard to postpersons'.. and that they were going to check for 'rolling compliance' .. "



Please tell us what you had that prompted this, my imagination is running wild.

Agree with catsmother, improving the literacy of council officials so they learn to write in plain English would be much more sensible than banning commonly used words that happen to be latin.

[OrmIrian]

What about words of more than 3 syllables then? And words with Latin derivations? Or borrowings from French.

You cannot treat adults like children. It's insulting.

Of course everyone should be able to understand the documents a council issues, but surely the majority of them can tackle something like 'e.g'? Do they don't read anything or listen to the news? FWIW I don't blame the council in a sense. But it's pathetic that people are so incapable of understand their own language - and it is their own language. That is the way English has developed over the centuries. It's not some weird foreign tongue.

[rebelmum1]

If people can't read you don't change the language to accomodate them, you divert the cash spent on useless bureaucrats to educate them..

[rebelmum1]

I was told I had a 'hazard to postpersons'.. and that they were going to check for 'rolling compliance' ..

[rebelmum1]

I mean have you checked out health and safety speak lately, now that is incomprehensible.

[Simplysally]

I went to a 'High School' over 20 years ago so it's not a new terminology nor, I'd say, particularly American. I don't think my 11+ results letter said I had failed, it said 'We are delighted to offer Simplysally a place at XXXXXXXXXXX High School' which wasn't the name of the grammar school so it was fairly obvious.

[UnfortunatelyMurderedMe]

heres a good example
Confusion over 11 plus. They would have been told off for putting FAILED in the past...so they changed the wording.
And people told the children they had passed, and they hadnt.

and more

[bronze]

Oh I agree Catsmother. Its often so ambiguous and I come away not really sure if I've given the the answer they were looking for.

[FattipuffsandThinnifers]

PMSL at '"A Campaign spokesman said the ban might stop people confusing the Latin abbreviation e.g. with the word "egg".'

YANBU, this is an idiotic waste of money. As catsmother said, it's one thing to work on official literature to make it easier to understand by simplifying the language, but it's another to do this by removing/replacing very well-known, established phrases (even if they are of Latin origin).

So much of LA literature (e.g. () council tax stuff) is so badly written it's unbelievable. But it's not the Latin that makes it so.

This is absolutely on a path to dumbing down. Next we'll see text-speak as standard official communication.

[catsmother]

In any case, I'm not so sure it's the vocabulary used in council literature which confuses people, but the composition of the stuff which can be cringeworthy. I visit council websites across the country on a regular basis as part of my job to try and extract all sorts of basic information - just as any ordinary householder would, regardless of their literacy skills - and I frequently find the lack of basic grammar, common sense and consistency displayed on many sites to be absolutely shocking. Talk about making a good impression - not.

[Simplysally]

Applaud even.

[Simplysally]

Applaud even.

[catsmother]

I'm all for using plain English and using the minimum number of words to explain something but I can't imagine that swathes of constituents have been left in ignorance and confusion because their council uses well known terms such as "e.g.".

The sort of person who lacks basic literacy skills isn't going to have a sudden "eureka" moment, as in, written communications suddenly becoming more understandable, just because some well known and everyday Latin words/abbreviations are removed. I'd hazard a guess that "e.g." is more often understood than any number of longer and/or obscure and/or legal style words commonly found in council literature.

[Simplysally]

I say this as a person who spent 40 minutes helping a member of staff fill out her application for maternity leave last week as she didn't understand the terminology used on the form explaining the legal requirements (she was still slightly baffled when she went away). I work in an industry which employs largely non-English speakers - which is possibly representative of a lot of London boroughs. I'm the world's biggest snob but in this case, I appaud it.