EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - Language campaign for readable official texts

Language campaign for readable official texts – The Hague, NL

Introduction

“Residents of The Hague should not have to struggle with incomprehensible language.” This statement by the mayor of The Hague, Mr Wim Deetman, outlines the goal of The Hague’s three-year language campaign ‘Helder Haags’ (Plain Hague). The campaign focuses on encouraging and teaching the municipality’s civil servants to write readable texts, whether these are letters, brochures or policy documents. The Hague’s efforts to close the language gap between its civil servants and residents are applaudable and can easily be transferred to other cities. Nevertheless, an organisation-wide commitment to improving the writing style is essential if the language campaign is to have a lasting effect.

Problem

What the municipality of The Hague does for its residents often remains invisible. The official texts from which residents get their information are too long and too complicated. Moreover, municipal texts do not make clear how a certain policy measure benefits the people living in The Hague or what action they need to take. Municipal council documents are particularly difficult to read.

Description

At the beginning of 2006, the city of The Hague launched its language campaign ‘Helder Haags’ (Plain Hague). Often organisations and people have difficulty with understanding the municipality’s letters, policy papers, brochures and other official texts. The Hague wants to close the language gap between civil servants and residents. With the support of an in-house language advisor, a three-year language campaign has been developed. Civil servants will be taught and encouraged to write reader-friendly official texts. Writing workshops, an internal website, language advice and a writing guide are a few of the tools used to raise civil servants’ language awareness.

Approach

A linguist from the university of Tilburg in the Netherlands has measured the language gap between the civil servants and The Hague’s residents. The results from this research are used as input for the campaign activities.

The language advisor and other ‘language ambassadors’ within the organisation monitor and assess municipal texts on a regular basis, whether asked or unasked for. In addition, they analyse the most frequently-used public materials each year and give the directorates guidelines for improvements. The texts are assessed on clarity, as well as spelling and grammar. The assessments are made public in consultation with management and are the starting point of any further improvement activities.

The language ambassadors mentioned above assist the language advisor in his work. They are editors, public relation officers or civil servants with an interest in language. They identify points of criticism, assist with the language campaign activities and edit texts.

Writing guides are developed to ensure that the municipality’s texts have a correct and recognisable tone. Adopting a uniform writing style will support The Hague’s customer-oriented approach.

The advice from the ‘Plain Hague’ writing guide and website is actively disseminated in the municipal organisation through workshops. Any group of civil servants can register for a workshop, provided the group members are all working on the same type of text. For example, the Human Resource officers participated in a workshop on writing texts for job vacancies. More general writing workshops are also available.

More ‘playful’ activities are also part of the campaign, including writing contests, digital language games, and a survey among civil servants on which terms should be banned from official texts.

The campaign pays special attention to letters and brochures for third country nationals. For this group, clear and understandable language is especially important.

Results

Since the beginning of 2006, The Hague’s civil servants have five ‘plain language’ tools at their disposal:

the in-house language advisor can be called or e-mailed for advice
the ‘Plain Hague’ writing guide with useful pointers for writing reader-friendly texts
the ‘Dear Citizen’ writing guide for letters and e-mails
a postcard with ten language tips, which is available to all civil servants and can be send round
an intranet-website which contains all the pointers from the writing guide, as well as extra examples of incorrect usage

In the coming two years, further tools will be developed, including separate writing guides for different types of texts, such as web-based texts and memoranda, and more specific training courses.

Contact info

City of The Hague
Wouter de Koning (Language advisor), tel. +31 70 3532608

Project start date

01/02/2006

Links

Visit the city of The Hague website Read the 'Plain Hague' tools on the city of The Hague website (in Dutch)

Document type

case

Themes

Urban Policy > Social inclusion & integration > Quality of life

Keywords

Skills improvement