Books
How to buy the books
If you have a UK postal address, you can pay by credit card through Paypal. Just click on the ‘buy’ button below each book description. If you prefer to pay by sterling cheque, please send it to us and state clearly what you wish to order. If you are buying for business use, you can send an official order without prepayment and we can invoice you.
If you do not have a UK postal address, please email us stating what you wish to order and your full address. We'll then send you a price list including the shipping cost. We can accept payment only by sterling cheque (or bank draft) and by credit card through Paypal.
- 'The Oxford Guide to Plain English' by Martin Cutts (Oxford University Press, September 2004) — provides 21 guidelines on how to write in a clear and well-structured way. Paperback.
‘A provocative tome...anathema to a generation of pedants.’ Daily Telegraph.
Price: £8 inc. UK shipping
- ‘Lucid Law’ by Martin Cutts (foreword by Lord Bingham of Cornhill) — describes our innovative and influential project to rewrite and redesign an Act of Parliament, showing how it could be clarified. Paperback.
‘A wonderful book.’ Nacab Booklist.
‘This report shows that, with the time, energy and inclination, statute law can be dramatically clarified.’ Clarity.
‘The most important contribution to statutory drafting this century.’ Professor Michael Zander.
You can download the book free of charge by clicking the cover page.
Price: £12 inc. UK shipping
- ‘Clarifying Eurolaw’ shows how the 1988 EC directive on toy safety could be written in clearer English without losing significant legal effect. Paperback.
The booklet gives a detailed commentary on the original directive (which begins with a 1,000-word sentence composed of 34 whereas-clauses) and provides a completely rewritten and restructured version. The revision cuts the number of internal cross-references by half, reduces average sentence length, and increases the number of headings from 16 to 43. It also includes a 'citizen's summary' setting out the main points in straightforward language.
The booklet sets out 6 principles for writing clear directives, including: 'Directives should be reasonably comprehensible to an intelligent citizen with an enquiring mind and an interest in the subject — not just to lawyers ... and special-interest groups.'
Plain Language Commission believes there is no place for legal dialect in modern law: ‘Legalese — the obscure and complicated style of many legal documents — is one of the few social evils that can be eradicated by careful thought and disciplined use of a biro. Legalese is doubly demeaning: firstly it demeans its writers, who seem to be either deliberately exploiting its power to dominate or are at best careless of its effects; and secondly it demeans its readers by making them feel powerless and stupid.’
The booklet has been produced with help from the European Commission's translation service, which has distributed 1,000 copies throughout the legal and administrative institutions of the EU.
You can download the book free of charge by clicking the cover page.
Price: £12 inc. UK shipping
- In this booklet Martin Cutts and Emma Wagner show how EC regulations — which apply directly to citizens in all member states — could be written in plainer language. Their booklet ‘Clarifying EC Regulations’ critically examines ‘Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents' and transforms it into a plain-English version. Paperback.
The revision casts aside such legalese as ‘hereinafter’ and ‘requisite’, and uses ‘read’ instead of ‘acquaint themselves’, ‘if’ instead of ‘in the event of’, ‘take’ instead of ‘instituting’, and ‘precise enough way’ instead of ‘sufficiently precise manner’. It breaks long sentences into vertical lists, adds a contents section, and uses 26 more headings than the original text.
In a foreword, Peter Hain, Minister for Europe, says: ‘We need to explain the benefits of the European Union in plain English instead of ‘Eurospeak’. Most people are put off the European Union by the way it is presented... What goes on in Europe matters to all of us — it's too important to be left to a European elite, communicating in insider jargon.’
The authors say: ‘Legislation should be written primarily for the intelligent, literate citizen with an enquiring mind, not just lawyers and special-interest groups.’
You can download the book free of charge by clicking the cover page.
Price: £12 inc. UK shipping
- The research director of Plain Language Commission has worked in the plain-language field for many years. This booklet of short articles describes some of the progress made since he co-founded the Plain English Campaign in 1979.
To get a free copy of ‘Twenty-five years of battling gobbledygook’, click the cover page.
- 'Indlish — The Book for Every English-Speaking Indian' by Jyoti Sanyal is available from Viva Books, price 295 rupees.
Click the cover page to download more details and to read the foreword by Martin Cutts, the book's editor.
- ‘Good Word Guide’ — The new edition of the ‘Good Word Guide’, published on 31 May 2007 by A&C Black, offers advice on the many problems faced by writers of English and will be valuable to students, journalists, report-writers, would-be authors, and anybody who has an important letter to write. Now in its 6th edition, the book has a new foreword from Martin Cutts of Plain Language Commission. Martin argues that hundreds of thousands of children go through school without getting interested in literature and that "illiteracy is one of the taproots of crime". However, he says English buffs are partly responsible for turning young people off literature:
"An interest in words too often declines into obsessive pedantry in which old rules and conventions are observed and prescribed long after any reason for them has gone. One of the strengths of English is its willingness to embrace change — new words emerge, new usages thrive, new norms are established..."
To buy a copy of the ‘Good Word Guide’, click here.
Click the cover page, above, to read the foreword.
- The Simple Secrets of Writing and Speaking (Almost) Like a Professional: College Edition
Written by Philip Yaffe, a former journalist and marketing consultant, this book adapts his previous book, In the ‘I’ of the Storm: the Simple Secrets of Writing & Speaking (Almost) like a Professional (Story Scientia, 2006). The first edition was aimed primarily at business executives and other professionals, while this second edition is for college students.
Philip has kindly agreed that we may include this second edition on our website. He would appreciate any feedback from students who use it; please email phil.yaffe@yahoo.com.
You can download the book free of charge by clicking the cover page.