Cost benefits and quality advantages of using plain language

What can go wrong

1. Computer manufacturer Coleco lost $35 million in a single quarter in 1983--and eventually went out of business--when customers purchased its new Adam line of computers, found the instruction manuals unreadable, and rushed to return their computers.

2. An oil company spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing a new pesticide . . . only to discover that the formula had already been worked out five years earlier--by one of the same company's technicians. He wrote his report so poorly that no one had finished reading it.

3. A nuclear plant supervisor ordered "ten foot long lengths" of radioactive material. Instead of getting the ten-foot lengths it needed, the plant received ten one-foot lengths, at a cost so great it was later classified.

4. Prof. Dorothy Winsor showed "a history of miscommunication" to be one of the root causes of the Challenger disaster in 1986.

5. Researchers concluded, "The Navy alone could save between $27 and $57 million worth of wasted time if its officers used a plain style."

Cost Savings from Plain Language Initiatives

(Canadian Dollars)

Australia

• In one Australian state they analyzed several forms which were normally completed by welfare recipients. The forms all required a reading level held by college students.
• The State of Victoria saved $400,000 in bureaucratic costs by merely simplifying the wording on a summons forms so people could understand it. They eliminated the jobs of 16 clerks and 10 police officers.
• Capita financial Corporation used to have 200 administrative forms, 14 of which were applications for individual insurance, investment and annuity products. Plain language experts studied these forms and found 1,560 errors in information. They consolidated, rewrote and redesigned the forms. The project cost $100,000 and will save an estimated $400,000 per year.

• The federal Communications Commission issued its regulations for citizen band radios written in traditional legal language. It required 5 staff members full time to answer the public's questions. After the rewritten plain language regulation was issued, the questions stopped, and all 5 people could be assigned to other duties.
• In 1973 Citibank redesigned and rewrote its consumer loan agreement. The motive was money: Citibank spent a lot of time in Small Claims Court, trying to collect on bad loans. It also spent a lot of time training staff to answer consumer questions about its complicated forms and contracts. Since the new form was introduced, Citibank has saved on staff training time and on small claim lawsuits. It also increased its market share and has never had the new form challenged in court.

• In 1977, Royal Insurance Company unveiled its "simple English" Select Homeshield Policy for home insurance. Sales increased 38%, from $58 million to $79 million in the same year.
• Since the early 1970's, Band of Nova Scotia has been redesigning forms and writing contracts in plain legal English. So far, it has never had a court case because of plain language.

• In 1984 a report was prepared by Coopers & Lybrand on the administrative and compliance costs of poor drafting in forms used by the UK Department of Health & Social Security. One form alone with an estimated annual use in excess of four million copies, accounted for errors costing more than £1 million to remedy. The cost of remedial action for errors in all fourteen forms (in the study) was more than £11 million. Most of these errors could be eliminated by better design and clearer language.
• Fifty thousand airplane passengers fill out a form every year for the Customs and Excise Department to claim lost baggage. The form had and error rate of 55%. Redesigning the form reduced the error rate to 3%, saving staff 3,700 hours in processing. It cost the Department about $3,500 to rewrite the form but saved about $45,500 a year in processing costs.
• In 1983, the UK Home Office produced a new application for naturalization that takes people 15 minutes less to complete than the old one and, thus, saves the public 20,000 hours a year.
• The Passport Office reduced the time it takes to fill out the application for one of its visas from 40 to 20 minutes on the average--significant because English is the second language of most of its users.
• The UK Land Registry introduced a new enquiry form about bankruptcy and showed an 80% decrease in the number of written questions and a 30% decrease in the number of complaints.
• The Office of Fair Trading produced a single form in straightforward language that replaced four forms that were previously required.
• The Department of Health and Social Security introduced plain language application forms for legal aid in 1984. It cost the Department about $50,055 to develop and test the forms, but they saved $2,917,290 in staff time yearly.
• The Department of Defence receives 750,000 claims for travel expenses yearly from its civilian employees. By rewriting the forms into plain language, the error rate was cut by 50%, the time needed to fill them out was reduced by 10% and the time needed to process by 15%. Preparing the plain language forms cost $23,265 but it saved about $778,320 per year.
• The Property Service Agency improved the design of a contract work order and saved about $221,000 per year in typists' time.

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