Abstract
The word ‘plain’ in its original sense just meant ‘flat, smooth’. In the thirteenth century, it also gained the meaning ‘evident’. And from the fourteenth century on, ‘plain’ has been used in the way we understand it in the term ‘plain language’: to refer to something simple, clear, and obvious without superfluous ornamentation:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/plain and http://www.etymonline.com/index.
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Plain language and readability
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Time to make it shorter: Plain English in our context
How CDC is promoting a clear communication culture
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Online plain English and readability resources
Get real: Avoiding corporate gobbledygook
Transferring regulation into practice: The challenges of the new layperson summary of clinical trial results
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English Grammar and Style Revising medical writing Reasons not rules: Backtracking, pronoun-induced Part 2 – Single syntactic unit revision
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Editoral Board
Editor-in-Chief:
- Phillip Leventhal (4Clinics, Lyon, France)
Co-Editor:
- Evguenia Alechine (Epsilon Scientific Communication, Buenos Aires, Argentina)
- Stephen Gilliver (TFS Trial Form Support, Lund, Sweden)
Managing Editor
- Victoria White (Tampa, Florida, USA) Email: MEW@emwa.org
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Associate Editors:
- Anuradha Alahari (PAREXEL International, Paris, France)
- Raquel Billiones (Clinipace, Zurich, Switzerland)
- Barbara Grossman (Hawkeye Medical Limited, Berkshire, UK)
- Joselita T Salita (Freelance, Bremen, Germany)
- Nathan Susnik (Hanover Medical School, Hanover, Germany)
- Clare (Chi-Chih) Chang
- Jonathan Pitt
Section Editors:
- Alison McIntosh (ICON Clinical Research, Hampshire, UK)
- Wendy Kingdom (Wendy Kingdom Ltd., Dulverton, UK)
- Lisa Chamberlain-James (Trilogy Writing and Consulting, Norfolk, UK)
- Maria Koltowska-Haggstrom (Proper Medical Writing Warsaw, Poland)
- Laura Collada Ali (Teksema, Cogne, Italy)
- Hervé Maisonneuve (Freelance, Lyon, France)
- Satyen Shenoy (Describe Scientific Writing & Communications, Cologne, Germany)
- Claire Gudex (Klinisk Institut, Odense, Denmark)
- Beatrix Doerr
- Sam Hamilton (Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK)
Ad-hoc Editors:
- Amy Whereat (SpeaktheSpeech Consulting, Asnieres sur Seine, France)
Editor Emeritus:
- Elise Langdon-Neuner (Medical University of Vienna, Austria)