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  Dan Friedman's "Plain and Simple" piece does a first-rate job of presenting both sides of a complex issue: How to improve the clarity of government writing.

  Plain English? There's more to it than the misguided notion that good writing means short sentences, the active voice, and a banal vocabulary. Of course, that's the way most of us wrote back in elementary school - the "Dick and Jane" style. But many organizations have found that the simplistic approach advocated by Annetta Cheek and the Center for Plain Language often distorts the meaning of government regulations - with dire consequences.

  Consider, for example, Ms. Cheek's "simplified" version of a regulation covering reimbursement related to "an act of international terrorism." (By omitting the reference to "international terrorism," Ms. Cheek makes it seem as if the sentence refers to routine travel expenses.)

  "If you already got payments from the government and another source for the same expenses, you must pay back what the government paid you."

  This clever play on words garbles the meaning of the regulation (28 CFR §94.25), which uses a common legal term - "subrogate" - to define a specific course of action:

  * if a claimant has received a certain sum in payment from the U.S. government, * and if additional payments may be coming (in the future, not payments "you already got") from another source (perhaps from an insurance company or another government), * the claimant must "subrogate" - that is, name the U.S. government as the recipient of payment from the other source. The payment goes directly to the United States, not to the claimant, who (according to Ms. Cheek's revision) would "pay back what the government paid you."

  Yes, improving the quality of government communication is critical to the health of the nation, but dumbing-down the English language is a cure that's worse than the disease.

  Michael R. McClory Posted July 17, 2008 10:21 AM