In the Plain Writing Act of 2010, Congress ordered the federal government to write clearly.  But few Americans realize that we have had plain-language executive orders, agency guidelines, and a website at least since the Clinton Administration.  Why are we still reading and writing dreck?

The Plain Writing Act resulted in updated federal guidelines that we can all use to write clearly. They live at a fine website.  

Moreover, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has long enforced plain-English standards when companies disclose information to investors.  You can download the SEC's own 83-page "Plain English Handbook.” 

And the federal agency that runs Medicare (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services or CMS) has published its own “toolkit” for writing clearly and inclusively.   This toolkit advises us how to design a document and collect feedback before we publish; and it warns us that readability formulas do NOT ensure readability.  Bonus: It even helps us write appropriately to older adults and people from other cultures.

But if you scan any of these guidelines, you will recognize most of them from high school, if not grade school, English.  They reflect common sense, such as

·      Write short sentences,

·      Use active-voice verbs,

·      Write short paragraphs,

·      Use words that your audience knows, and

·      Test your document with its audience before you publish. 

Why, after decades of good advice, do we still write impressive but ambiguous documents?  Does bafflegab still lure us with the power of avoiding readers who criticize because we avoid readers who understand?

Years ago, I helped a famous professional person write a document.  I cut it drastically and transformed key noun actions into active verbs.  I kept the nouns consistent, and topic sentences led most paragraphs.  The author gave the result to another professional who made suggestions; then I received the resulting document for a second round.  It was again long and inflated; evidently, inflation spelled prestige.

I gave up. 

Today, I hope, I would persist.  I would keep on editing for clarity until the author fired me.  But I wonder.  When will clear English be prestige English?

Flesch Readability Index:  56.5 

Grade Level: 8th grade, 6th month

Dr. King and the Topic Sentence

Dr King did not read his speeches; he spoke them.  So when we read them, someone inserted the paragraph breaks.  But Dr. King made it easy.

Dr. King started each chunk of his speech with a main idea, and then he elaborated it.  In written form, his speeches exhibit nearly perfect paragraphs, each beginning with a “topic sentence.”  This pattern is an amazing feat of rhetorical ability.

On Dr King’s Day in 2012, I studied one of his speeches (as is my custom). They are all available to us at http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documents_contents   I chose his April 3, 1968, speech, I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.  

This speech’s point sentence was  “Strangely enough…‘…in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy.’ ”

Here’s how the next paragraphs begin:

Now that’s a strange statement to make because the world is all messed up.  [Rest of paragraph illustrates the mess.]

And another reason I’m happy … demands didn’t force them to do it.  [Rest of paragraph: how demands force us to protest nonviolently.]

I can remember … Negroes … scratching where they didn’t itch and laughing when they were not tickled.  [Rest of paragraph: we work toward the opposite of that unnatural behavior.]

Now what does this mean in this great period of history? It means that we’ve got to stay together.  [Rest of paragraph: how staying together foils white power.]

Secondly, let us keep the issues where they are. The issue is injustice.  [Rest of paragraph: injustice.]

When I write paragraphs, I try to announce a topic sentence and then support it.  To do so reliably, I must work retrospectively.  I draft the document first; then I go back and relocate or add the topic sentences. 

Dr. King, on the other hand, did so many things brilliantly.  He told moving stories.  He verbally embraced and emboldened his audience.  He told the truth, but always in love.  And, intellectually, his speeches could announce a topic, and support it, and move smoothly to the next. 

He made it seem easy.

Each time he spoke, he built, in the air between him and his audience, a structure so perfect it can still instruct us today.