Plain Language in the 1950s

How the feds learned to write gooder

Military typist, undated. Source

Jargon and “official-ese” plague governments everywhere. In regulations, reports, and websites, government writing too often avoids the clear and the straightforward. It has always been thus. Consider the following¹ quote from the 1890s, both truly painful and quite representative:

Sir: In obedience to your request of the 15th instant for my opinion as to the merit and practicability of the new system of transacting the official business assigned to the office of the Auditor for the Treasury Department, and under my charge, as may have been evidenced to me during the period in which it has been in operation, I beg to submit the following:

In the words of Yes, Minister, “I couldn’t have put it less clearly myself.” Government writing is less stilted today, not least because of the Plain Language movement – an effort to simplify government writing so that ordinary people can make sense of it.

The federal government began² adopting these principles with an executive order during the Clinton administration, eventually leading to the Plain Language Act of 2010. Today, the major initiative is improving government websites; the US Digital Service, among others, offers resources such as training and style guides.

Bad government writing is an age-old problem, and attempts to improve it are only a bit younger. In 1955, the General Services Administration³ published a writing guide called “Plain Letters”, thereby kicking off an effort to improve writing across the government.

The guide, as the name implies, explained what constitutes a good letter. But more than that, it aimed to train good letter writers. The focus was partially on the final document, but even more so on investing in the writer himself.

Plain Letters

Mona Sheppard – the author of Plain Letters – begins with an anecdote that sets out the problem of bad writing, as well as the remedy:

Once when Franklin K. Lane was Secretary of Interior he happened to see a very ornate letter to an Indian. That letter, in Mr. Lane’s own words, was “so involved and so elaborately braided and beaded and fringed” that he himself could not understand it. So he sent it back to its author with this pith advice: use straightaway English.

We don’t know the rest of the story. But if the author took Mr. Lane’s advice we can easily imagine how he slashed through the trappings that hid the meaning of his letter. He cut out lazy words and cut down big ones. He woke up passive verbs and made them active, straightened out roundabout phrases, and shortened long sentences. Then he tied all his sentences together.

When the author had done slashing and straightening we can imagine that the Indian letter was transformed. From beginning to end its meaning shone clearly in every single word. It may not have been a literary masterpiece, but it was easy to read and easy to understand. It was a plain letter.

Besides the problem and the remedy, these first three paragraphs show how engaging and readable this guide is, at least so far as style guides go. Since there was only a single author, it could have a consistent style and an overall narrative structure – a lesson that government perennially neglects.

But back to the guide: everyone who writes a guide needs to propound some sort of formula, and Sheppard was no exception. She advocates⁴ a 4-S formula for letter writing: Shortness, Simplicity, Strength, and Sincerity. The first half of the work explains this formula, and the second half gives a series of examples.

The majority of the guide is stylistic: preferring simple over complex words, avoiding the passive voice, and so forth. It is no different from modern style guides in this respect, even if it is better written. However, it was unusually practical compared to modern government style guides.

Plain Letters covers nothing except writing government letters. Being limited to a single narrow subject, it can dive deeper than generic Plain Language style guides. As a result, the guide had two unique strengths: (1) it stressed the need for subject-matter expertise, and (2) it offered advice for improving the substance of letters (in addition to the style).

Knowing the subject

The guide went beyond a focus on good letters, and focused on becoming a good letter writer. That is to say, it focused on investing in the federal workforce; good government writing was evidence that this investment had paid off.

Sheppard advises government employees to master their agency’s business, and (if they haven’t) suggests practical ways to go about learning.

She begins⁵ with the need for subject-matter expertise and offers a concrete example of how it can lead to clearer writing:

Know your subject so well you can discuss it confidently and naturally. […]

A government letter may turn out hard to understand when the writer, not quite sure of his subject, plays safe by sticking to the language of rules and laws.

Let Letterwriter X show you what happens. Not sure of the meaning of a regulation he wrote this sentence in a memorandum:

“PA” means that you are classified with those employees currently serving under absolute or probational appointments in positions held by the employee on a permanent basis, including preference eligibles in excepted positions under appointments without time limitations.

Mr. X’s boss, sure of the meaning of “PA” and the status of the person to get the memorandum, might rewrite that sentence to say:

You are on the “PA” list because you have a permanent civil service appointment.

And how should a bureaucrat acquire this knowledge? As part of a longer list of suggestions, she offers⁶ three suggestions to civil servants about acquiring subject-matter expertise:

1. Study all new laws and rules that you will be called on to explain. If you are not sure of their meaning, ask somebody who is. And don’t wait until you get a letter on the subject. Be ready.

2. Discuss new subjects with your fellow employees.

3. Learn the practical art of clearing up knotty problems with examples. Do this by making up questions and answers in advance. You’ll find the ready-made examples handy in writing letters.

Once employees had acquired subject-matter expertise, they could put it to use and write letters with better content.

Better substance

Plain Language guides today often focus on using unambiguous language in e.g. regulations. In other words, they generally focus on adding clarity to given ideas. Since Sheppard is dealing with a narrowly-defined issue, she can suggest ways to improve the substance of letters, thereby avoiding common mistaken approaches.

For example, she suggests⁷ a thorough rewrite to a stilted and cold opening paragraph. It adds entirely different (and more helpful) content, which draws upon the subject-matter expertise of the letter writer:

Before:

This will acknowledge receipt of your letter of September 5, 1954, enclosing an application for --- and stating that this application was previously submitted to this agency on August 25, 1954, but was returned without evidence of any action having been taken thereon.

After:

You are due an apology for our error in returning your --- application as we recently did. You had every right to expect a letter of explanation. The fact is, your application had to go back to you for more information, but somehow it got into the mails without our letter telling you this.

The guide covers several issues that are specific to government letters: crafting a strong beginning, or acknowledging mistakes. One⁸ piece of advice: “Admit mistakes. Don’t hide them behind meaningless words.”

And, like most style guides, it gives a series of examples – good letters, generally by famous officials past and present.

One was FTC Commissioner Lowell Mason’s letter to a concerned citizen. Mason’s response⁹ was so charming that I will indulge in one last block quote:

Thank you for your letter of June 18 stating the reasons for maintaining the present status of Section 2 (c) of the Robinson-Patman Act.

They are the usual arguments in favor of this law, but you have expressed them so well, so carefully and in such an open and friendly manner that I confess not only admiration for your presentation, but complete agreement with many of your points.

There is, however, more to this problem than either you or I have covered. With your leave, I shall search out in a later note some of the pros and cons of this most interesting subject we might consider together.

June has been a heavy month for me, so I expect to take a short vacation, what Walt Whitman described as the “white spaces in life.” You will hear from me the latter part of July.

Plain Lessons

Plain Letters is, in the end, just a style guide. It is an unusually well-written one, but much of the content is no different than what we have today.

And in most respects the modern approach is better. The biggest problem with Plain Letters is its overly literary style, which uses too many complex sentence constructions. While it is an unfortunate fact that the average adult reads at an 8th grade level, it is nonetheless a fact, and modern Plain Language guides rightfully take account of this.

But it holds enduring value as part of the 1950s investment in the federal workforce. This guide was¹⁰ distributed to hundreds of thousands of civil servants, thousands of whom attended 4-S training sessions.

This focus was reflected in the guide itself. It doesn’t just focus on better letters, it focuses on better letter writers. It tells government employees squarely that they have got to know what they’re talking about, and then gives them some pointers on how to learn. Writing guides today could focus on the person writing documents, and not just on the documents themselves.

Government writing guides today could also dive deeper into specific issues: they could offer advice on substance, not just style. Plain Language guides on, say, regulation might be written by regulatory commissioners. They might offer advice about specific phrases that lead to litigation, and better ways of rephrasing them.

Finally, Plain Letters showed that guides with a narrow scope and a single author can be readable and memorable, which is strikingly unlike style guides generally.

Perhaps some enterprising US Digital Service employee will write Plain Emails.

Appendix (source): Do you want to write gooder, too?

Source: The book is freely available on Google Books. I recommend it highly: it has been helpful for my long-form writing and has dramatically improved my emails. There’s a good bit more to the guide than I have described.

---

Before you go

A question for my international readers: is “government style” a worldwide problem? Does the “before” quote in Better Substance remind you of bureaucrats in your country, with its overly-formal, cold, and dense language? If not, what is their “government style”?

And a request for my readers: Does anyone know anything about Mona Sheppard?

There is a bit of biographical information available about her, and apparently she wrote another book on business letters.

Over the past few weeks, several readers have reached out to offer additional information or context about previous posts (and more on that soon).

So, here I will preemptively ask.

1. “Treasury Department, Office of Auditor for the Treasury Department” February 18th, 1895. It was part of the Senate report on the Cockrell-Dockery commission.

The auditor actually has a very positive opinion of the system he is about to describe, which he fails to indicate in any way whatsoever.

2. Actually, there were attempts to adopt plain language during the 1970s, but none of these efforts stuck.

3. Or rather, the National Archives, which at that time was part of GSA. The guide was published as a GSA publication.

4. Page 6.

5. Page 15-16.

6. Pg 16

7. Page 7

8. Page 8

9. Page 37

10. Second edition of Plain Letters, introduction.