Sixty members of the Public Sector Communicators’ Network attended a presentation by Lynda Harris, founder of the WriteMark — New Zealand’s first quality mark for documents. Hot on the heels of WriteMark launch, the presentation outlined the benefits of using plain English, including how to create and support a plain English culture within an organisation.

Susan Bartel, Network Committee member, hosted the presentation at the National Library Auditorium. Introducing Lynda, Susan said, 'When I heard about the WriteMark I thought it was an excellent idea, and that the Network would be very interested to know about it'.

To demonstrate the WriteMark assessment process, Network members were invited in advance to enter a plain English writing competition. Their documents were assessed against WriteMark’s plain English standard.

The winner of the competition was Brian Bond from Inland Revenue. Congratulations Brian! Lynda said his entry, Dave’s Story, fulfilled all the assessment criteria: 'It's an excellent and engaging example of a message clearly conveyed, where there is no doubt about its meaning, or the desired result'. Brian won a copy of StyleWriter for his office — an excellent plain English software editor.

Business card draw winners were Emma Williams from the Ministry for the Environment (a free document assessment) and Kate Fox from Victoria University (a copy of The Write Style Guide for New Zealanders: A Manual for Business Editing).

The presentation was a great success — a positive sign of public sector awareness of the need for clear communication.