News

Gore issues first plain English award

July 1, 1998

Vice President Al Gore on Tuesday gave out the first of his new awards to federal employees who rewrite regulations in plain English.

Marthe Kent, director of the Office of Regulatory Analysis at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, won the first of Gore's No Gobbledygook Awards for clearing up a convoluted regulation about "dip tanks," which are containers for chemicals such as those used for stripping paint off furniture or cleaning auto parts.

"As we in the federal government begin to write in plain language, we will not merely be cutting out words and phrases, we will be reexamining the original purpose of the rules and regulations," Gore said at a White House ceremony. "Reviewing and rewriting government communications is part of reinventing government itself."

Gore said he will present a No Gobbledygook Award to a federal employee every month. The awards are part of the Vice President's plain language initiative, launched last month at a small business conference in Washington. Under the initiative, federal agencies must write all letters, forms, notices and instructions in plain English starting this October. All regulations must be written in plain English beginning in January 1999. In addition, agencies must rewrite existing documents--not including regulations--over the next four years.

The OSHA regulation that won the first monthly award explains employers' responsibilities for keeping dip tanks safe. The regulation used to read:

"This paragraph applies to all operations involving the immersion of materials in liquids, or in the vapors of such liquids, for the purpose of cleaning or altering the surface or adding to or imparting a finish thereto or changing the character of the materials, and their subsequent removal from the liquid or vapor, draining and drying. These operations include washing, electroplating, anodizing, pickling, quenching, dyeing, dipping, tanning, dressing, bleaching, degreasing, alkaline cleaning, stripping, rinsing, digesting and other similar operations."

Kent's rewrite reads:

"When does this rule apply? This rule applies if you use a dip tank that contains a liquid other than water or a dip tank that generates a vapor. It applies if you use the tank or vapor to:
(1) Clean;
(2) Coat;
(3) Alter the surface of; or
(4) Change the character of an object."

Gore said people often ignored the old rule because they couldn't understand it.

"Fixing one rule, of course, is not even a drop in a dip tank. We've got a long way to go. But it is a start," Gore said. "Over the next year, hundreds more pages of regulations will be rewritten, and each and every month, we'll spotlight one example that illustrates the principles of plain language."

Federal employees from a dozen agencies have banded together to form the Plain Language Action Network. The group's Web site lists on-line resources for improving writing and explains how to apply for a No Gobbledygook Award.

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