You say it best, when you say nothing at all

 Often I wonder if we need plain English, or just plain common sense. 

Usual rubbish

The other day, somebody in The Royal Liverpool and Broad Green Hospital NHS Trust had their knuckles rapped for not checking an advertisement before it was posted on the NHS website.  It clearly didn’t get past the last stage of sign-off, where it was somebody's responsibility to cut and paste in some standard copy.

The post has been updated now, but you can still find the original on the Huffington Post UK.

Two lines of the ad were incomplete:

Job description available from …

Usual rubbish about equal opportunities employer etc …

Those ellipses (three little dots) give it away, really. They scream “missing copy” as loudly as Lorem Ipsum* or the recent Guardian sidebar that read:

“Pull quote over five

lines in here 

here herey

herey herey

type over text”

These are cries for help, people. They say “I don’t know what content goes in here! Please will somebody fill it in!“ 

Every organisation is “committed to equality and diversity” because the Equality Act 2010 makes it the law.

So why do they have to put all those meaningless “we are committed to”  words on the page when that’s what they must do anyway? Could they not use the space more wisely to give more detail about the experience, knowledge and level of accreditation they are seeking in their anaesthetist candidates? I'm hoping they'll choose someone who has a degree in medicine, and who hasn't lost too many customers on the operating table.

Down the toilet

Recently, copywriter Tom Albrighton picked up on something that has irked me all my adult life – I think it’s safe to say I’ve seen many more of these notices than he has.

COSTA NOTICE

We would kindly request that customers refrain from disposing of nappies and sanitary towels down the toilet and ask that you make use of the disposal bins provided

Thank you.

Tom says:

“The curiously branded ‘Costa notice’ certainly strikes the right snappy, vinegary tone. The total lack of punctuation gives an icily brittle, peremptory feel, while ‘we would kindly request’ and ‘bins provided’ add a bitter twist of passive aggression and pursed-lips butter-wouldn’t-melt etiquettery.” 

I’ve seen worse notices, and I’ve seen better. But we shouldn’t need to have these dreary notices in ladies’ toilets. A girl should hear it once from her mum and once from her PSHE (personal social and health education) teacher. And never forget it! If twice isn’t enough, there's always the spectre of Dad or the Dyno-Rod man wading up the garden path in his wellies to embarrass a teenage girl with gory details of what he’s found lurking in the drains. 

Health education was called ‘Hygiene’ in my day, and we had one lesson a week on useful stuff like this. 

The clearest message comes from the United Utilities campaign What not to flush: 

“It's really easy to remember what you can flush, only what comes out of you and toilet roll” 

There are some simple and fun messages on there – for girls, boys, ladies, and gents. What not to put down the toilet, what not to put down the sink. When the cooking fat meets the nappies, that's the time to leave town.

Make the messages simple, fun, and memorable, and you can flush away all the usual rubbish about “Patrons** being kindly requested to…” 

*Lorem Ipsum now in Yorkshire flavour 

**Or should that be Matrons?