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Communication
Journal of Business
DOI: 10.1177/002194369903600402
1999; 36; 335 Journal of Business Communication
Nittaya Campbell
How New Zealand Consumers Respond to Plain English
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by Daniele Fortis on October 10, 2009 http://job.sagepub.com Downloaded from
335
How New Zealand Consumers
Respond
to
Plain
English
Nittaya Campbell
University of Waikato, Hamilton,
New Zealand
In recent
years
New Zealand has seen an
increasing
awareness
of
the need
for
and the
benefits of providing readily
understandable business and
government
doc-
uments. In this
paper
I
report
a
psycholinguistic study testing
the level
of
con-
sumer
comprehension of
bank contracts and the
effect of using plain English
to
rewrite them. The
plain
versions
encouraged subjects
to read the documents more
carefully
than
they
read the
original versions,
and the
subjects
understood the con-
tent and
implications
better when the contracts were written in
plain English.
The
most
effective
means
of enhancing comprehension
was that which included both
lexical and
syntactic manipulation of
text.
Subjects
said that
they preferred
the
plain English
versions
of
the contracts to the traditional versions.
&dquo;
ew
experiences
are as
refreshing
as
finding
a contract we can
read,&dquo;
Fsays
Crow
(1988, p. 86)
in his article
discussing
consumer
contracts,
readability,
and
comprehension.
Crows statement
will,
in
turn,
be refresh-
ing
for
many,
who will find that
they
are not alone in
feeling annoyed,
confused, frustrated,
and even intimidated or
stupid
when confronted
with a document that
they
feel is
beyond
their
comprehension.
As citizens and consumers we encounter
every day
and in almost
every
sphere
of
activity
documents that are less than
readable,
be
they
law and
regulations, instructions, manuals,
insurance
policies,
and so on. Criti-
cism of
writing
that is difficult to understand is not
new,
and over the
centuries there have been
attempts
to
change
the
way
official and other
public
documents are written so that
they
are understandable to those
who must read them. As
early
as the sixteenth
century,
for
example,
an
English judge
ordered a hole cut
through
the centre of a
particularly
lengthy
document filed in his court. He then ordered the
writer,
who
puffed up
the document from 16
pages
to
120,
to be led
around,
with the
head stuffed
through
the
hole,
in front of all those
attending
court
(Asprey, 1991; Wydick, 1985).
More recent calls for readable documents can be seen in
writings
since
the middle of this
century by
writers such as Rudolf Flesch
(1949/1974),
Sir Ernest Gowers
(1954/1986),
and Stuart Chase
(1954/1971). Many
law
professors
and
practitioners
have also advocated
simpler legal language,
including language
used in contracts
(e.g., Conard, 1947; Hager, 1959;
Mehler, 1960-1961; Mellinkoff, 1963/1973; Kimble, 1987, 1992; Garner,
1991a, 1991b).
Usually
written in
long,
convoluted sentences with archaic
words and
legal terms,
contracts are notorious for
being difficult,
if not
altogether impossible,
for
people
with no
legal training
to understand. In
this
paper
I describe a
study
conducted to test the level of consumer com-
prehension
of some bank contracts in New Zealand and the effect of
using
plain English
to rewrite them.
by Daniele Fortis on October 10, 2009 http://job.sagepub.com Downloaded from
336
A
History
of the Plain
English
Movement
The
greatest impetus
for
change
in the
way public
documents were
written was the consumer movement in the United States in the 70s. The
movement not
only
led to better
products
and services but also
eventually
affected
aspects
of
language
used in the documents which described those
products
and services
(Eagleson, 1991b).
&dquo;Plain
English&dquo;
has been
put
for-
ward as an alternative to
&dquo;legalese&dquo;
and other
types
of
&dquo;gobbledegook,&dquo;
resulting
in the first
plain English
car insurance
policy,
introduced
by
Sentry
Insurance in 1974. This achievement was followed in 1975
by
the
first
plain English
loan note
by Citibank,
a
major
bank in New York. Other
insurance
companies
and banks as well as businesses in other industries
have since followed
Sentrys
and Citibanks lead in
making
their docu-
ments more
readily
understandable to consumers
(see,
for
example, Good,
1989; Jereb, 1991; Martin, 1989; Meitin,1985).
One of the most recent
developments
is the work done
by
Securities and
Exchange Commission,
which has
produced
a
plain English
handbook on how to create clear dis-
closure documents
(Office
of Investor Education and
Assistance, 1998).
Plain
English is, according
to
Eagleson (1990), &dquo;clear, straightforward
expression, using only
as
many
words as are
necessary.
It is the
language
that avoids
obscurity,
inflated
vocabulary
and convoluted sentence con-
struction&dquo;
(p. 4).
Its
language
is &dquo;unadorned with
archaic, multisyllabic
words and
majestic
turns of
phrase
that even educated readers cannot
understand&dquo;
(Redish, 1985, p. 125).
It is &dquo;a full version of the
language,
complete
and
accurate,
... written with the readers needs in mind&dquo;
(McLaren, 1996, p. 2)
and
&dquo;conveys
the writers
message
in an effective
and efficient manner&dquo;
(Law
Reform Commission of
Victoria, 1987, p. 3).
Some
guidelines
advocated
by plain English proponents
include
using
plain words, keeping
the
average
sentence
length short, avoiding
nomi-
nalizations and
passive constructions, personalizing
the
message
with
first- and
second-person pronouns,
and
using examples
and scenarios to
help explain concepts.
The
plain English concept
has been
gaining increasingly widespread
recognition,
not
only
in the
private
sector but also in
government
and law.
Concerned over &dquo;consumer credit contracts couched in
language
under-
standable
only by
those versed in arcane subtleties of creditor remedies&dquo;
(Givens, 1981, p. 11),
the State of New York enacted in 1977 a law which
required
not
only public
but also
private
bodies to
express
themselves in
a
way
that
people
can understand
(Vernon, 1980).
In
1978,
President
Carter
signed
Executive Order No. 12044
requiring
federal officials to
write
regulations
in
plain English
&dquo;understandable to those who must
comply
with them&dquo;
(Leskovac, 1987, p. 1193).
Many
states in the USA
have since
passed plain English
acts
regulating
the
style
of
writing
of cer-
tain consumer
contracts, including leases, mortgages,
service
contracts,
credit
applications,
loan
forms,
and insurance
policies (Redish, 1985).
In
by Daniele Fortis on October 10, 2009 http://job.sagepub.com Downloaded from
337
1998 President Clinton
(1998)
issued a memorandum
urging
executive
departments
and
agencies
to
adopt plain English
in their
writing (memo-
randum
reproduced
in full in
Clarity, September, 1998, p.
3).
On the research
front,
scholars have conducted studies to find effec-
tive
ways
to write or rewrite documents so that
they
are
readily
under-
standable to readers.
Although readability
formulas were
popular
in the
early years
(see Davison, 1986,
and
Schriver, 1991,
for overviews of read-
ability research),
and are still used
today
in various
computerised forms,
debate continues about their
suitability
and
validity
as measurement and
predictor
of the
comprehensibility
of documents
(e.g., Shelby, 1992;
Stevens, Stevens,
&
Stevens, 1992).
Research has
suggested
that
compre-
hensibility
is more than a matter of short words and short sentences
measured
by readability
formulas
(e.g.,
Charrow &
Charrow, 1979; Flower,
Hayes,
&
Swarts, 1985;
Redish &
Selzer, 1985; Schriver, 1997).
Charrow
and Charrow
(1979),
for
example,
have found that
linguistic
features such
as
nominalisations, passive constructions,
and noun
strings
create
prob-
lems in
comprehension. Flower, Hayes,
and Swarts
(1985)
have found that
to understand
documents,
readers create &dquo;scenarios&dquo; in which human
agents
take actions in
explicit
situations.
They
recommend revision strate-
gies,
based on the scenario
principle,
that include
organising
information
around actions and the readers
likely questions, using headings
with a
human
focus,
and
giving examples
and cases. Other research has focused
on the
organisational
factors in
reading
and
comprehension (e.g., Suchan,
1998;
Suchan &
Colucci, 1989; Suchan,
&
Dulek, 1990).
The
plain English
movement has
spread
to countries other than the
USA.
Developments
in
Britain, Canada, Australia,
and South Africa have
been well documented
(see,
for
example, Cutts,
&
Maher, 1980; Eagleson,
1991a; Kimble, 1996-1997; Perrin, 1990;
Canadian Bar Association &
Canadian Bankers
Association, 1990; Knight, 1996a, 1996b).
In the bank-
ing industry,
St.
George
in Australia
(Bennett, 1993)
and the Bank of
Nova Scotia in Canada
(Dick, 1980, 1985)
are
examples
of
banking
insti-
tutions that have rewritten
documents,
such as
mortgage contracts,
in
plain English.
Plain
English
in New Zealand
In recent
years,
New Zealand
government agencies
and businesses have
become more aware of the need for and the benefits of
providing
their
publics
with
readily
understandable documents.
Telecom,
for
example,
announced in 1992 that its new
telephone directory
was written in
plain
English
to make it more
easily
accessible to users. Some
professional
groups
such as the Law Commission of New
Zealand,
the
Airways
Cor-
poration,
Inland Revenue
staff,
and finance houses have also been keen
to train their members in the art of
writing effectively
and have
sought
help
in the form of
workshops
and seminars from
plain English experts
by Daniele Fortis on October 10, 2009 http://job.sagepub.com Downloaded from
338
and consultants. Even the rule book for
rugby
has now been rewritten in
plain English
so that the rules are
easy
to read and understand for both
referees and
players
on the one hand and
spectators
on the other
(&dquo;Rugby,&dquo;
1994).
The
pioneering
work in
plain English writing
for the
public
in New
Zealand occurred in 1985
through
the initiative of the Public Trust
Office,
an
organisation
whose services include the
preparation
of wills. The
Public Trust Office
prepares
and holds wills on behalf of 16% of the adult
population (Public
Trust
Office, 1991).
In
1985,
it decided to take a dif-
ferent
approach
to will
writing.
Instead of the
traditional, legalese style
it
had been
using
for more than a hundred
years,
it
completely
rewrote its
wills
precedents using plain English. According
to the Public
Trust,
the
exercise was a
great success,
with
many
new and
existing
customers
requesting
that their wills be written in
plain English.
In the business
year ending
31 March
1988,
it had drafted a record number of new
wills,
and in the
following
business
year
a record number of its clients revised
their wills
(Public
Trust
Office, 1991).
Since the work initiated
by
the Public
Trust,
a number of insurance
companies
have moved or are
moving
towards
plain English
documenta-
tion. State Insurance was the first to rewrite its
policies
in
plain English.
A Tower
Corporation
director with a &dquo;distaste for
gobbledegook&dquo;
(&dquo;Woman,&dquo; 1993, p. 2)
issued an internal booklet called &dquo;Plain
English&dquo;
to
encourage
staff to
drop jargon.
Sun Insurance commissioned a communi-
cation
design company
to rewrite its
agency agreement
in
plain English,
the new
agreement beginning
with the
following:
&dquo;Part of our commitment
to
you
is to
provide you
with all the information
you
need.
Accordingly,
this
agreement
has been written in
plain English&dquo; (1993, p. 3; personal
communication,
Dr. H.
Malloy,
Van De Roer
Design,
17
August 1994).
In the
legal profession,
the move towards
plain English
has been
hap-
pening
on two fronts:
legal
documents in
ordinary
use and
language
used
in
legislation.
The Dunedin
Community
Law Centre
(1994),
for
example,
has
published
the book The Law and You in
plain English
to educate the
public
about some basic laws that affect
daily
life. The Christchurch Com-
munity
Law
Centre, commenting
on insurance
practices
in New
Zealand,
favors better communication and
plain English pamphlets
or resources
(Ministry
of Consumer
Affairs, 1993).
Many big
law
firms,
and some
smaller ones
too,
have
plain English specialists
to make sure that docu-
ments for clients do not leave the office in
legalese.
The Institute of Pro-
fessional
Legal
Studies for some
years
now has been
teaching plain Eng-
lish to
newly graduated lawyers
as
part
of their
professional training
before admission to the Bar.
When the Labour
party
won the
majority
of seats in New Zealands
parliament
in
1984, part
of its mandate for an
&dquo;open government&dquo;
was to
simplify
laws to make them as
readily
understandable as
possible (Palmer,
by Daniele Fortis on October 10, 2009 http://job.sagepub.com Downloaded from
339
1988).
To that
end,
the New Zealand Law Commission was established in
1985 to
&dquo;propose ways
of
making legislation
as understandable and acces-
sible as
practicable
and of
ensuring
that it is
kept
under review in a
sys-
tematic
way&dquo; (New
Zealand Law
Commission, 1990, p.
ix).
The Commis-
sion
produced reports suggesting ways
to avoid
prolixity
and
tautology
(1990)
and
providing plain English guidelines
for the structure and
style
of
legislation (New
Zealand Law
Commission, 1996).
At
present,
the
Income Tax Act is
being
rewritten. The act is
being
reordered and reor-
ganized
into a
logical,
structured format and
plain English
is
being
used
in the rewrite to make the act more readable
(&dquo;Language,&dquo; 1995;
McLaren
&
Harrison, 1998).
These
developments
show that there is an
increasing
awareness of a
style
of
writing
that allows citizens and consumers to
participate
in
social,
commercial, legal,
and other activities more
effectively through being
able
to understand the information
presented
to them.
However,
the
adoption
of
plain English
is not as
widespread
as
proponents
would have
liked, par-
ticularly
in
major private
sectors. In the
banking industry,
for
example,
contracts are still far from readable for
consumers, despite
the effort of
the New Zealand Bankers Association to
encourage
banks to
improve
cus-
tomer-oriented documentation.
In its Code of
Banking Practice,
the New Zealand Bankers Association
gives
the
following
directive: &dquo;Banks will
provide
customers with the
terms and conditions of
any banking
service. Where this is
expressed
in
writing
banks will use
plain language
to the extent that it is consistent
with the need for
legal certainty&dquo; (1992,
Clause
2.2, p. 2).
While a few
banks have
begun
to work toward
&dquo;user-friendly&dquo;
documentation on some
forms and
brochures,
the efforts have been few and far between. As an
industry,
banks still have a
long way
to
go.
The
study reported
in this
paper
was conducted to see whether
rewriting
bank documents in
plain
English
would
help non-expert
consumers to understand them better.
Test of Plain
English
in Canada
The motivation for the
study
was derived in
part
from research carried
out in Canada
by
Masson and Waldron
(1994),
who tested the
compre-
hensibility
of four
legal contracts,
each one
having
been redrafted in three
styles.
In the &dquo;archaic-terms-removed&dquo;
version,
archaic terms in the
orig-
inal document were
replaced
or removed and redundant words or
phrases
deleted. In the
&dquo;plain language&dquo; version,
difficult words were
replaced
with
simpler ones, long
sentences divided into shorter
ones, passive
voice
changed
into active
voice,
and references to the
parties replaced
with the
pronouns
&dquo;I&dquo; and
&dquo;you.&dquo;
In the final
draft,
the
&dquo;legal-term-defined&dquo;
ver-
sion,
all
legal
terms in the
plain language
version were
replaced by
sim-
pler,
more common words or were
explained
in the text.
In Masson and Waldrons
study,
48
non-experts
read the documents
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340
while
being timed,
answered
hypothetical
scenario
questions,
and
para-
phrased
a
segment
of the documents.
Although
the use of
plain English,
in the
plain-language
and
legal-terms-defined versions,
did not affect read-
ing
rates
significantly,
it resulted in a
significant
increase in the
per-
centage
of
propositions,
or idea
units, being correctly
recalled and
para-
phrased, compared
with the versions that did not use
plain English.
For
the scenario
questions,
in which the
subjects
had to
give
a
&dquo;yes&dquo;
or &dquo;no&dquo;
answer and then
justify it,
the use of
plain English improved
the
accuracy
of both the decisions and the
justifications. Merely removing
archaic
terms or
including
definitions of
legal
terms did not affect
performance
significantly.
Masson and Waldrons
study provides empirical
evidence that
simpli-
fying drafting style
increases
comprehension
but
that,
to make real
gains,
the revisions &dquo;must attack the
complexity
of
language
and
syntax
in a
more radical
way&dquo;
than
simply removing
word-level barriers
(1994, p.
78).
Pilot
Study
Before the
study reported
in this
paper
was
conducted,
I interviewed
36
people
about the state of
plain language
in New Zealand
surveyed
1,000
customers of 7
major
banks in New Zealand
by
mail.
The aim of the interviews was to find out about the state of affairs of
the
plain English
movement in New Zealand and about current
opinions
concerning
consumer documentation in
general
and bank contracts in
particular.
Of the
people interviewed,
26 were
personnel,
both
managerial
and
front-line,
from the seven
banks,
and 10 were from outside the bank-
ing industry.
The non-banker interviewees were chosen because of their )
involvement with or interest in issues
relating
to
plain English, compre-
hensible consumer-oriented
documents,
document
design,
or
legal writing.
,
These include
lawyers,
one of whom had been a
major
force behind the
rewriting
of the Public Trust Office wills and one of whom was an instruc-
tor at the Institute of Professional
Legal Studies;
the Chief Executive of
the Consumers
Institute,
a director of a communications
design company,
and a
manager
from the
Ministry
of Consumer Affairs.
The
goal
of the mail
survey
was to find out whether consumers who
had the
types
of bank contracts under
study
understood them.
Responses
from 234 customers
(24%)
revealed that customers
generally
found their
bank contracts difficult to understand. The
response
did not come as a
surprise
to bank
personnel
interviewed. Some of the
personnel,
even
those who dealt with these contracts
regularly,
conceded that
they
them-
selves had
problems understanding
these documents. Guided
by
their
commonsense
assumption
that
plain English,
as
opposed
to
legalese,
would be more conducive to
comprehension, they supported
the idea that
bank contracts should be
simplified.
Some
personnel, however,
were not
convinced about the
benefits, legal
or
otherwise,
of
plain English.
by Daniele Fortis on October 10, 2009 http://job.sagepub.com Downloaded from
341
Research Questions
The
study
was
designed
to answer the
following questions:
RQ
1: Would
non-expert
readers read the
plain English
versions of a
contract faster?
RQ
2: Would
non-expert
readers understand the content and
implica-
tions of a bank contract in the
plain English
versions more
effectively?
RQ
3: If
they did,
what
types
of
change (lexical, syntactic,
or format-
ting)
would make the most difference?
Method
The
study reported
in this
paper employed
research
techniques
based
on those used in Masson and Waldron but did not
replicate
the Canadian
study exactly.
Some details
differed, particularly
in the
rewriting stages
and in the use of an
additional, qualitative
method.
Firstly,
the three
stages
of
simplification
were defined to more
clearly
distinguish among
different
types
of
manipulation.
Masson and Waldron
did not
clearly distinguish
lexical from
syntactic manipulation
of text.
While
changes
in
syntax
occurred in the second
stage
of
simplification,
changes
at the word level occurred in all three
stages.
In the
present
study,
lexical and
syntactic changes
were introduced at different
stages
so
that
any change
in
comprehension
could be more
effectively analyzed
and
explained.
Secondly,
Masson and Waldron did not test document
design. However,
simple
words and
short,
active sentences are not the
only
concerns of
plain
English proponents.
As research has
shown, aspects
of information
pres-
entation such as
format, layout, typography,
and
graphics
are also
impor-
tant for
readable, &dquo;user-friendly&dquo;
documents
(see,
for
example,
Battison &
Goswami, 1981; Charrow, 1988; Felker, 1980; Redish, Battison,
&
Gold,
1985; Schriver, 1997; Wright, 1980, 1982, 1984). Hence,
the
study reported
in this
paper incorporated
some
design
features in the last version.
Thirdly,
because a
single
research
strategy
is often too limited to
cap-
ture the
complexity
of &dquo;real-world&dquo;
problems (Denzin, 1978; Burgess, 1982;
Mingers
&
Brockleby, 1995),
a
qualitative component,
in which
subjects
were interviewed after the
reading test,
was added to
provide
another
per-
spective.
The
multiple-strategy approach
was
adopted
to overcome the &dquo;nar-
rowness&dquo; of the
quantitative, experimental approach.
It was
anticipated
that
subjects
comments
regarding
their
feelings
about the
documents,
the diffi-
culties
they
encountered
during
the
test,
and so on would
complement
or
help
to
explain
the results obtained from the
psycholinguistic part
of the
study, thereby affording
richer
insights
into the
problem.
Subjects
Sixty
volunteers
participated
in the
study.
These volunteers were
by Daniele Fortis on October 10, 2009 http://job.sagepub.com Downloaded from
342
solicited
through posters put up
at various
strategic places
around and
outside the
University
of
Waikato; through
distribution of advertisement
leaflets to
parents
at some schools in the
city
of
Hamilton,
New
Zealand;
through
word of
mouth;
and
through
the
snowballing technique
in which
subjects
who had
completed
the
study
were asked to tell others about the
study.
To eliminate the
language-ability variable, only
native
speakers
of
English
were
eligible
to
participate. Lawyers,
law
students,
and bank offi-
cers were excluded to avoid bias due to
familiarity
with the
type
of doc-
ument or the
writing style.
The
sample comprised
17 males and 43 females
aged
from 17 to 63.
Most
(78%)
were
aged
from 31 to 50.
Twenty-six subjects
(43%)
had at
least a bachelors
degree,
nine of whom also had a masters or doctorate
degree.
Ten
per
cent had no more than
secondary education,
and the rest
had some
post-secondary
education below a bachelors
degree.
Volunteers
came from a
range
of
occupations, including
homemakers
(15%), post-sec-
ondary
students
(15%), tradespeople (15%),
and
professionals
in various
fields
(55%).
Half of the
subjects
rated their
reading ability
as
very good,
35% as
good,
and 15% as
average.
None of the
subjects
rated their read-
ing ability
as
poor
or
very poor.
Subjects
were not
paid
for their
participation
but went into a
drawing
for three small
prizes
at the end of the
study.
As the
experiment
would
involve between 1-2 hours of
grueling
mental
activity,
which is a lot to ask
of
people,
the
prizes,
donated
by
local
banks,
were considered
necessary
as an incentive to attract volunteers.
Documents and Test Materials