The complete plain words

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1. dghfJun 2020
   Two invaluable guides to clear, unfussy English, one short and one long:

   * George Orwell's essay 'Politics and the English Language' [0], which includes his six rules for writing

   * Sir Ernest Gowers' The Complete Plain Words [1], originally a style guide for the notoriously prolix British Civil Service, in which he offers this memo from the ancient Egyptian ministry of finance as a paragon:

   > Appollonius to Zeno, greeting. You did right to send the chickpeas to Memphis. Farewell.

   [0] https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...

   [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_Plain_Words

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2. falsedanDec 2017
   On the topic of clear writing, a longer work to follow on from this article is The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers. I heartily recommend it, and find its recommendations on reducing officialese quite useful for increasing clarity in technical documentation.
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3. dghfJul 2025
   Not irrelevant at all. The case of the relative pronoun is determined by its role in the relative clause, not by the role of the relative clause in the sentence as a whole.

   See:

   - H. W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage

   - Eric Partridge, Usage and Abusage

   - Ernest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words

   who are unanimous on this point.

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4. cafardJan 2023
   Sir Ernest Gowers, who did a mid-century revision of Fowler's Modern English Usage, wrote a book on his own, The Complete Plain Words, and remarked on ways that what in law appears to be nit-picking is necessary clarification. Gowers was a judge.
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5. dghfSep 2017
   Two usages that Ernest Gowers bemoaned in The Complete Plain Words, written c. 1950, but which seem unexceptional today: "phenomenal" to mean "prodigious" (rather than simply "perceptible to the senses"), and "meticulous" to mean "scrupulous" (rather than "overly and timidly careful"). I think it's too late to save or revive their previous meanings, but it's a shame to lose those nuances.
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