Of all the barriers to change...

Of all the barriers to change – and to realizing the benefits of plain language – none is greater than the myth that clarity has to be sacrificed for precision, especially with complex subjects. Don’t believe it. The murkiness that plagues so much official and legal prose is usually generated by the writer, not by the substance. It comes more from bad style than from the inherent difficulty of the subject. And that’s when the need for “precision” becomes a lame excuse for writing.