Link: STRAIGHT TALK IN WASHINGTON.
(Orange County Register, Sunday December 10, 2006.) In the 18 months since Gov. Chris Gregoire ordered all state agencies to adopt “plain talk” principles, more than 2,000 state employees have attended classes on writing letters, announcements and documents in everyday language... When citizens know what the government wants from them, there’s a better chance they’ll comply, officials have found. For example, by rewriting one letter, the Department of Revenue tripled the number of businesses paying the “use tax,” the widely ignored equivalent of sales tax on products bought out of state. That meant an extra $800,000 collected over two years... “Simple changes can have profound results,”...
This is long overdue. And not just in government. But in business, too. I know I have a tendency to get verbose, er, garrulous, uh effusive... (grrr!)... wordy.
It used to be whenever I started a sentence with "and" or "but," I got a little memory of my grade school teacher telling our class that we should never start sentences with "and" or "but". And that seemed to be at the heart of my loquaciousness, er, long-winded bantering. Rather than just writing it like I'd say it, I found myself having to think about "better" words. So I used more of them just so I could appease the ghost of teachers past.
But you know, here I am a few decades later and I'm thinking, hey it works. And when I read an article that says they actually made money just by rewriting business docs and legalese to be more prosey, well, how cool is that? A 300% bump in businesses participating in something that used to be ignored while increasing revenue by over three-quarters of a million dollars in must two years by just rewriting text? I'm all over that.
Here are some "before" and "after" shots of Washington state's Straight Talk initiative:
| BEFORE | AFTER |
| "We have been notified that you did not receive the State of Washington warrant listed on the attached Affidavit of Lost or Destroyed Warrant Request for Replacement, form F242." | "Have you cashed your L&I check yet? The state Treasurer’s Office has informed us that a check we sent you has not been cashed." |
| "If you do not wish to purchase 1 2 month gross weight at the time of renewal, please contact your license agent to determine the fees due for the number of months you wish to purchase. If you are not sure that purchasing 1 2 months is a good choice for you, please discuss the options with your license agent before purchasing your tabs." | "To license for less than 1 2 months, contact a vehicle licensing office to determine the amount due." |
| "Specific to the CO2 mitigation program, Ecology recommends that the reviewing authority assure compliance with the approved mitigation plan on an annual basis, unless project circumstances indicate that a more or less frequent compliance review is appropriate." | "Reviewing authorities conduct annual reviews to assure compliance with the mitigation plan." |
