Plain English

From Plain English Campaign (http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/)

Plain English is defined as "language that the intended audience can understand and act upon from a single reading".

While this is a technical forum, and technical language is necessary for clarification, in all other cases write using plain English. Write professionally. Write clearly. Writing on Wiki is an opportunity to improve your writing.

This is one of the WikiSocialNorms.

Some extreme cases:


Confusion about PlainEnglish:

The title of this page for example is confusing. Is it a noun or an imperative instruction? Perhaps EschewObfuscation? would be a clearer title? :o) -- AndrewCates

Perhaps another confusion some have is that if one expresses something in abstraction, that does not exclude it from being "PlainEnglish". From abstractions one can manufacture multitudes of personalized instances. Some wish to reduce the clutter of stating all possible instances, or limiting the expressions to instances, by abbreviating via abstraction. Abstraction is really a convenient and efficient use of language. -- DonaldNoyes.20071106


The US government has a web site, http://www.plainlanguage.gov, that contains guidelines for communicating clearly. However, it doesn't communicate very well - try http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/plainenglishguide.html instead!


What about contributions to Wiki in other languages such as AgileMoedera? Use WikiTranslator?


MeaningfulNames discusses choosing good variable names in software; perhaps that is related to choosing good WikiWords.


I know of a programming language called "Plain English Programming" that you could try; is presented in http://www.osmosian.com/ and now I'm trying to program in with it. It would be interesting that you try it and tell everybody about the possible classification and limits of its paradigm. Pablo Cayuela 20131218


See WikiGrammar WikiEditingCustoms http://www.emacswiki.org/cw/PlainTalk GoodStyleSuggestions


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