Talk:Plain Writing Act of 2010

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scientific basis

Are the requirements of the act based on empirical evidence for what sort of language communicates well? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.189.2.183 (talk) 17:48, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about the Act itself (that is, I don't know what its framers knew), but empirical evidence indicates that some sentences are harder to read than others. See for example Center embedding, Garden path sentence, and Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. And see Reading comprehension, Sentence processing, Psycholinguistics, Plain language, Plain English, and List of plain English words and phrases. Plain language consultants such as Martin Cutts claim to use focus groups to test the readability of their plain language translations of bureaucratese, legalese, governmentese, officialese, and academic-ese. There is a research literature on readability; for example see: Charrow, Robert P.; Charrow, Veda R. (1979). "Making Legal Language Understandable: A Psycholinguistic Study of Jury Instructions". Columbia Law Review. 79 (7): 1306–1374. doi:10.2307/1121842. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |lay-url= (help) Teratornis (talk) 21:47, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]