Accreditation criteria
What are the criteria for gaining accreditation?
The simple answer is that the document should be in plain English, but what exactly does this mean? 'The Oxford Guide to Plain English' (Cutts, Oxford University Press 2004) describes plain English as:
‘The writing and setting out of essential information in a way that gives a co-operative, motivated person a good chance of understanding the document at first reading, and in the same sense that the writer meant it to be understood.’
So plain language is not an absolute: what is plain to scientists may be obscure to lay people. It is inevitable that some documents use technical language but, where possible, they should give explanations. We can accredit a difficult text if we feel it could not be put more simply without verbosity or loss of meaning. Hence we do not expect all documents to be equally plain to everybody, though they should always be appropriate to the intended audience.
We take account of layout. This is because clear writing and good structure are not always enough on their own — they need to be complemented by good use of type, white space and symbols — the visual language of typography. No document will ever be perfect, but to win the right to display the Standard it should meet the criteria indicated by the following questions:
Purpose
- Is the purpose obvious or stated early and clearly?
Content
- Is the information accurate, relevant and complete, anticipating readers' questions and answering them? Are essential technical terms explained or defined?
- Is a contact point stated for readers who want to know more?
Structure
- Is the information well organized and easy to navigate through, with appropriate headings and sub-headings?
- Is there appropriate use of illustrations, diagrams and summary panels?
Style and grammar
- Is the style appropriate for the audience, with a good average sentence length (say 15-20 words), plenty of active-voice verbs, and reasonably short paragraphs?
- Is the document free of pomposity, verbosity and officialese (no aforesaids, notwithstandings, herebys, adumbrates, commencements and inter alias)?
- Is the text grammatically sound and well punctuated?
- Is capitalization consistent in text and headings?
- If there is a contents page, are its headings consistent with those in the text?
Layout and design
- Does the document look good?
- Is the type easily readable and is there enough space between lines of type?
- Is there a clear hierarchy of headings and spaces?
- Have emphasis devices, such as bold type, been used well?