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
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Transferring regulation into practice: The challenges of the new layperson summary of clinical trial results
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Editoral Board
Editor-in-Chief:
- Phillip Leventhal (4Clinics, Lyon, France)
Co-Editor:
- 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)
- Katharine Webb (INC Research, in Munich, Germany)
- Nathan Susnik (Hanover Medical School, Hanover, Germany)
Section Editors:
- Alison McIntosh (ICON Clinical Research, Hampshire, UK)
- Karin Eichele (Novartis Pharma, Nürnberg, Germany)
- Greg Morley (Freelance, Madrid, Spain)
- 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)
- Simon Page (Cambridge Medical Communication Ltd, Cambridge, UK)
- Hervé Maisonneuve (Freelance, Lyon, France)
- Satyen Shenoy (Describe Scientific Writing & Communications, Cologne, Germany)
- Claire Gudex (Klinisk Institut, Odense, Denmark)
- Evguenia Alechine (Epsilon Scientific Communication, Buenos Aires, Argentina)
- Beatrix Doerr
Ad-hoc Editors:
- Amy Whereat (SpeaktheSpeech Consulting, Asnieres sur Seine, France)
Editor Emeritus:
- Elise Langdon-Neuner (Medical University of Vienna, Austria)