The WriteMark celebration, held on 13 September 2005 to mark a great first six months for New Zealand’s plain English standard, also launched a supporters’ network.
About 100 people attended the ceremony in Wellington — including representatives of firms that have already adopted the new standard, Write Group staff and contractors, Wellington Central MP Marian Hobbs, and actress Lorae Parry, who gave a memorable speech as the one and only ‘Prime Minister Helen Clark’.
It was ‘a coming of age’ for WriteMark, six months after the launch in March 2005, said WriteMark Limited's CEO Lynda Harris. She said a number of ‘early adopters’ were already using WriteMark, and many more organisations were exploring it.
Lynda described the new Plain English Supporters’ Network as ‘a plain English club’ whose members would receive training, support, and free use of two logos (‘We Prefer Plain English’ and ‘Plain English Supporter’) on any printed or online material.
She said Write Group staff were ‘champion translators, not of foreign languages but of pure Kiwi-made bureaucratic legalistic business speak. And it’s our fascination with untangling language that sparked the creation of WriteMark’.
WriteMark had been born of frustration, she said. Write Group had been helping clients write plain English for a decade and while short term results were excellent there was little change in the number of ‘ghastly documents’ being presented.
‘Mission statements from government departments, law firms, banks, and accountants proclaimed that they were writing in plain English. Mostly it wasn’t true. But how would consumers know? What was plain English anyway? What was the standard?
‘When the word “standard” popped up, it became obvious. New Zealand needed a test of business writing that would establish whether it was clear, well structured, well presented and generally reader-friendly. A low-cost, uniquely New Zealand quality mark was born,’ Lynda said.
Former MP Deborah Morris-Travers, now working for Plunket, said that her support of the WriteMark was motivated by the need to make information about policy and political matters accessible to all. After careful scrutiny and rewriting, Plunket’s Advocacy Toolkit now carried the WriteMark, Deborah said. ‘We are a non-governmental organisation with an important role to play in the lives of New Zealanders, and WriteMark supports us in this.’
Other organisations of note at the celebration included:
- Insurance company, Asteron, although not present at the event, was also mentioned as being the first insurance company to achieve the WriteMark standard on a policy document.
- Inland Revenue Child Support, whose National Manager, David Udy, said his aim is to have all public Child Support documents written to the WriteMark standard
- patent attorneys AJ Park, who are working on their own, in-house, plain English campaign, and
- accountants and business advisors Francis Consulting Ltd, whose plain English ‘Letter of Engagement’ is a welcome change from traditional ‘accountant speak’.
