Read more
The Oxford Guide to Plain English offers practical guidelines to help readers make their writing clearer by improving structure, word choice, grammar, punctuation, and layout. This new edition gives expert and up-to-date advice on all aspects of the writing process, from planning the material successfully to writing in the most user-friendly way.
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Starting points
- The thirty guidelines
- Summary of the twelve main guidelines
- 1: Planning comes first
- 2: Organizing your material in a reader-centred structure
- 3: Writing short sentences and clear paragraphs
- 4: Preferring plain words
- 5: Writing concisely
- 6: Favouring active-voice verbs
- 7: Using vigorous verbs
- 8: Using vertical lists
- 9: Converting negative to positive
- 10: Using good punctuation
- 11: Using good grammar
- 12: Keeping errors in Czech: its time to Proof read
- 13: Dealing with some troublesome words and phrases
- 14: Using or avoiding foreign words
- 15: Undoing knotty noun strings
- 16: Reducing cross-references
- 17: Exploring and exploding some writing myths
- 18: Avoiding clichés
- 19: Pitching your writing at the right level
- 20: Writing sound starts and excellent endings
- 21: Creating better emails
- 22: Using inclusive language
- 23: Using alternatives to words alone
- 24: Caring enough about customers to write to them clearly
- 25: Overseeing colleagues' writing
- 26: Writing better instructions
- 27: Clarifying for the Web
- 28: Making legal language lucid
- 29: Writing low-literacy plain English
- 30: Clarifying page layout: some basics
- Appendix 1: Commonest words
- Appendix 2: A short history of plain-English moments
- Sources and notes
- Index
About the author
Martin Cutts is a writer, editor, and teacher. He co-founded the Plain English Campaign in 1979, and in 1994 he founded Plain Language Commission. He gives writing-skills courses in companies, government departments, and law firms. He is a leading voice in the international plain-language movement.
Summary
Plain English is the art of writing clearly, concisely, and in a way that precisely communicates your message to your intended audience. This book offers expert advice to help writers of all abilities improve their written English. With 30 chapters, each centred around a practical guideline, its coverage is extensive, including lessons on vocabulary, punctuation, grammar, layout, proofreading, and organization. There are also hundreds of real examples to show how it's done, with handy 'before' and 'after' versions. All this is presented in a straightforward and engaging way.
This new edition has been fully revised, reorganized, and updated to make its content even more accessible. There are new chapters discussing customer-service writing and common blunders in the workplace, while other sections have been amended to update examples and provide easier routes through the book. The chapter on sexism, in particular, has been heavily expanded to advise on the use of inclusive language in general. A new appendix has also been added, summarising the history of plain English from Chaucer to the present day.
Additional text
This is an excellent book! Information is presented in a crisp, clear and easy to read way. The principles are easily grasped, and the use of examples helps the reader to test their understanding and reinforce their own learning.
