Alan Duncan, the Minister of State at the Department for International Development (DFID) was widely reported in the media as having issued a memo regarding the correct use of English by his department.
The Daily Telegraph report linked to above now has an embedded copy of the memo (although it appears to be a scan of a printed version rather than an electronic copy), but at the time I read the report it didn’t. So I decided that obtaining it would make a suitable subject for a Freedom of Information request.
The request was successful, so here is the memo in full:
The Minister of State’s Plain English Tips
The MoS is happy to describe himself as a grammar fascist and is concerned that the excessive use of jargon endangers DFID’s reputation. If we use language the rest of the world doesn’t understand, we diminish that reputation. For that reason, all of our communications and, in particular submissions, must be immediately explicable to the non-DFID reader. Clear language conveys clear thought. Its poor use suggests sloppy thinking.
Officials are therefore required to express themselves in sentences which can be parsed and with grammar that sets a high standard. It irks when nouns are used as verbs, apostrophes are left off (or misplaced), compound adjectives (such as UN-led) are not hyphenated, and sentences are begun with “But” or “However”.
The MoS would prefer that we did not “leverage” or “mainstream” anything, and whereas he is happy for economies to grow, he does not like it when we “grow economies”. Nor is he impressed with the loose and meaningless use of “going forward”, either at the beginning or the end of any sentence.
Thus we do not ever “access”, “catalyse”, “showcase” or “impact” anything.
Nearly as depressing for him is reading about DFID’s work in “the humanitarian space”.
He finds it annoying when conjunctions such as “which” or “that” are inexplicably dropped in a way which ruins the flow and logic of a sentence. He would also prefer to meet someone than “meet with” them. Likewise, a sentence which begins “Grateful for your…” would appear to be lacking the prefix “I would be…”.
The constant repetition of a word such as “resilience” as a substitute for saying what is meant, risks rendering a submission purposeless.
Submissions should have a logical flow and not attempt to fill the page with every conceivable fact that can be retrieved by cut and paste.
No draft letter should ever use the scruffy old letter head template which has a big DFID and big UKAid logo at the top – all must be deleted and banished. Ministerial style only.
All email templates must express phone numbers properly – “0207” is wrong (it should be “020 7123”), mobile numbers are five then six digits: if you want to write “+44” do not add the “0” in brackets. Email chains should delete extraneous space and words, and in particular all previous disclaimers.
Disclaimer: MoS is always willing to be challenged about his judgments on grammatical standards and will not take offence at a properly reasoned opinion.
(The emphasis in the final paragraph is from the original)
As it happens, I agree with pretty much everything in that memo, with the exception of the ban on starting a sentence with “But” or “However” – that’s a rule I’m happy to break when I feel it’s appropriate. And I completely agree with the minister’s dislike of buzzwords which merely serve to hide the author’s paucity of original thought. But (ha!) the thing that I am particularly pleased to see is that the minister doesn’t just understand how to use English correctly, but also understands how telephone numbers are formatted and the fundamentals of email etiquette.
There are many “grammar fascists”, to use the minister’s own words, who combine rigid linguistic pedantry with execrable disregard for the niceties of electronic communication, while at the other extreme there are those who will take umbrage at an unsnipped signature and yet are incapable of stringing a meaningful paragraph together. It’s good to see that the minister is equally concerned for correct form in both composition and formatting.
A big “Well done”, therefore, to Alan Duncan for not only realising that grammar and communication etiquette do actually matter, but being prepared to instruct his staff in the same. Would it be too much to ask that other ministers will follow suit and instruct their departments to cut toe waffle and use English properly? I certainly hope not.