'Plain Facts' win award for Plain English
Research can be anything but simple. But a team from the University of Bristol are among the winners at the 1999 Plain English Awards after demonstrating that complex findings do not have to be explained in a complicated way.
Using a magazine format that combines clear language and pictures with audio tapes, their series of ‘Plain Facts’ publications makes research messages accessible to people with learning and literacy difficulties. The topics covered include employment, training, welfare benefits, housing, and crime.
Fourteen issues of Plain Facts have been published since it was launched two years ago. Another eight are planned for next year. The magazines and tapes, which are published jointly by the Norah Fry Research Centre in Bristol and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, are sent free of charge to more than 1,500 groups and organisations in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Ruth Townsley, the Plain Facts editor and co-ordinator, said: “It is more common for academics to be criticised for talking and writing gobbledegook than to be congratulated by the Plain English Campaign. We are delighted that ‘Plain Facts’ has been recognised in the awards because it has shown that it is entirely possible to present complex academic research in ways that everyone can understand.
“Plain Facts makes us think hard about what we really want to say. It uncomplicates the complicated.”
