| 翻訳と辞書 |
| The Complete Plain Words ： ウィキペディア英語版 |
''The Complete Plain Words''''', titled simply '''''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv
''The Complete Plain Words'', titled simply ''Plain Words'' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.
All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.
==Background==
The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:
The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."〔Dickens, Chapter 10〕 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".〔("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 〕
Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".〔''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii〕 During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.〔Gowers (2014), p. xii〕 His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials.〔 Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours."〔"Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5〕
Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.〔Gowers (1954), p. iv〕
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
■ウィキペディアで「'''''The Complete Plain Words''''', titled simply '''''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv」の詳細全文を読む
'The Complete Plain Words'', titled simply '''''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv
''The Complete Plain Words'', titled simply ''Plain Words'' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.
All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.
==Background==
The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:
The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."〔Dickens, Chapter 10〕 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".〔("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 〕
Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".〔''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii〕 During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.〔Gowers (2014), p. xii〕 His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials.〔 Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours."〔"Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5〕
Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.〔Gowers (1954), p. iv〕
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
■ウィキペディアで「'''''The Complete Plain Words''''', titled simply '''''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv」の詳細全文を読む
', titled simply ''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv
''The Complete Plain Words'', titled simply ''Plain Words'' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.
All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.
==Background==
The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:
The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."〔Dickens, Chapter 10〕 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".〔("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 〕
Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".〔''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii〕 During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.〔Gowers (2014), p. xii〕 His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials.〔 Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours."〔"Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5〕
Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.〔Gowers (1954), p. iv〕
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
■ウィキペディアで「'''''The Complete Plain Words''''', titled simply '''''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv」の詳細全文を読む
'Plain Words'' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv
''The Complete Plain Words'', titled simply ''Plain Words'' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.
All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.
==Background==
The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:
The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."〔Dickens, Chapter 10〕 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".〔("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 〕
Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".〔''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii〕 During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.〔Gowers (2014), p. xii〕 His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials.〔 Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours."〔"Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5〕
Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.〔Gowers (1954), p. iv〕
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
■ウィキペディアで「'''''The Complete Plain Words''''', titled simply '''''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv」の詳細全文を読む
' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv
''The Complete Plain Words'', titled simply ''Plain Words'' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.
All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.
==Background==
The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:
The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."〔Dickens, Chapter 10〕 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".〔("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 〕
Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".〔''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii〕 During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.〔Gowers (2014), p. xii〕 His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials.〔 Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours."〔"Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5〕
Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.〔Gowers (1954), p. iv〕
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
■ウィキペディアで「'''''The Complete Plain Words''''', titled simply '''''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv」の詳細全文を読む
'The Complete Plain Words'', titled simply '''''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv">ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
■ウィキペディアで「'''''The Complete Plain Words''''', titled simply '''''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv」の詳細全文を読む
', titled simply ''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv">ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
■ウィキペディアで「'''''The Complete Plain Words''''', titled simply '''''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv」の詳細全文を読む
'Plain Words'' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv">ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
■ウィキペディアで「'''''The Complete Plain Words''''', titled simply '''''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv」の詳細全文を読む
' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv">ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
■ウィキペディアで「'''''The Complete Plain Words''''', titled simply '''''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv」の詳細全文を読む
'The Complete Plain Words'', titled simply '''''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv">ウィキペディアで「'''''The Complete Plain Words''''', titled simply '''''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv」の詳細全文を読む
', titled simply ''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv">ウィキペディアで「'''''The Complete Plain Words''''', titled simply '''''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv」の詳細全文を読む
'Plain Words'' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv">ウィキペディアで「'''''The Complete Plain Words''''', titled simply '''''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv」の詳細全文を読む
' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv">ウィキペディアで「''The Complete Plain Words''''', titled simply '''''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv」の詳細全文を読む
'The Complete Plain Words'', titled simply '''''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv」の詳細全文を読む
', titled simply ''Plain Words''''' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv」の詳細全文を読む
'Plain Words'' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv」の詳細全文を読む
' in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, ''Plain Words'' (1948) and ''ABC of Plain Words'' (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.All the editions until that of 2014 were published by HMSO. The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.==Background==The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing ''Plain Words'' in 1948, ''The Manchester Guardian'' quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In ''Little Dorritt'' in the mid-1850s, Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence."Dickens, Chapter 10 By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".("officialese" ), Oxford English Dictionary, retrieved 5 April 2014 Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said… that we revel in jargon and obscurity".''quoted'' in Gowers (2014), p. xii During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand.Gowers (2014), p. xii His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours.""Plain Words", ''The Times'', 15 April 1948, p. 5Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to ''Plain Words'' and its two successors.Gowers (1954), p. iv」の詳細全文を読む
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