Bibliography supporting the ISO standard

On this page

General

Books

  • Flesch, R. (1979). How to write plain English: A book for lawyers and consumers. HarperCollins.
  • Eagleson, R. (1990). Writing in plain English. Australian Government Publishing Service.
  • Kimble, J. (2006). Lifting the fog of legalese: Essays on plain language. Carolina Academic Press.
  • James, N. (2007). Writing at work: How to write clearly, effectively and professionally. Allen & Unwin.
  • Asprey, M. (2010). Plain language for lawyers (4th ed.). Federation Press.
  • Kimble, J. (2012). Writing for dollars, writing to please: The case for plain language in business, government, and law. Carolina Academic Press.
  • Redish, J. (2012). Letting go of the words (2nd ed.). Morgan Kaufmann.
  • Gowers, E. (2015). Plain words: A guide to the use of English. CCH Incorporated.
  • Mowat, C. (2015). A plain language handbook for legal writers (2nd ed.). Carswell.
  • Adler, M., & Perry, P. (2017). Clarity for lawyers: Effective legal language (3rd ed.). Law Society.
  • Kimble, J. (2017). Seeing through legalese: More essays on plain language. Carolina Academic Press.
  • Cutts, M. (2020). Oxford guide to plain English (5th ed.). Oxford University Press.
  • Breivega, O., & Senje, A. (2010). Klarsprak i prakis. Kunnskapsforlaget.

Journal articles

  • Samuels, A. (2006). Plain language in the UK. The Clarity Journal, (56), 6–9.
  • Eagleson, R. (2009). Ensnaring perceptions on communication: Underlying obstacles to lawyers writing plainly. The Clarity Journal, (62), 9–13.
  • Cheek, A. (2010). Defining plain language. The Clarity Journal, (64), 5–15.
    Valdovinos, C. (2010). Advocating plain language. The Clarity Journal, (64), 40–45.

  • Cornelius, E. (2015). Defining ‘plain language’ in contemporary South Africa. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics, 44, 1–18.

  • Balmford, C., Cheek, A., Kleimann, S., Harris, L., & Schriver, K. (2018). Plain language standards: A way forward. The Clarity Journal, 79, 11-16.
  • Schriver, K. (2017). Plain language in the US gains momentum: 1940–2015. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 60(4), 343-383.
  • Flesch, R. (1948). A new readability yardstick. Journal of Applied Psychology, 32(3), 221-233.

Online download

Online articles

 

Principle 1 – Readers get what they need

Journal articles

  • Stephens, C., Black, M., & Redish, J. (2010). Plain language in plain English: Identify the purposes of the document. The Clarity Journal, 63, 8–13.

  • Theobald, C. (2025). Bridging cultures: The importance of multicultural review networks, a case study. The Clarity Journal, (90), 6–11.

 

Principle 2 – Readers can easily find what they need

Books

  • Beier, S. (2012). Reading letters: Designing for legibility. BIS Publishers.

  • Black, A., Luna, P., Lund, O., & Walker, S. (2017). Information design: Research and practice. Routledge.

  • Brown, T. (2019). Change by design: Revised and updated. HarperCollins.

  • Cerne Oven, P., & Pozar, C. (2016). On information design.

  • Doumont, J. (2009). Trees, maps, and theorems: Effective communication for rational minds. Principiae.

  • Frascara, J. (2015). Information design as principled action: Making information accessible, relevant, understandable, and usable. Common Ground Research Networks.

  • Katz, J. (2012). Designing information: Human factors and common sense in information design. John Wiley & Sons.

  • Lipton, R. (2007). The practical guide to information design. John Wiley & Sons.

  • MacEachren, A. (2004). How maps work: Representation, visualization, and design. Guilford Press.

  • Meirelles, I. (2013). Design for information: An introduction to the histories, theories, and best practices behind effective information visualizations. Rockport.

  • Pontis, S. (2019). Making sense of field research: A practical guide for information designers. Routledge.

  • Redish, G. (2012). Letting go of the words: Writing web content that works (2nd ed.). Morgan Kaufmann.

  • Schriver, K. (1997). Dynamics in document design. John Wiley & Sons.

  • Tufte, E. (1983). The visual display of quantitative information. Graphics Press.

  • Ware, C. (2000). Information visualization: Perception for design. Morgan Kaufman.

  • Zwaga, H., Boersema, T., & Hooghout, H. (1999). Visual information for everyday use: Design and research perspectives. Taylor and Francis.

Journal articles

  • Brown, T. (2009). Design thinking. Harvard Business Review, 86(6), 84–92.

  • Redish, G., Felker, D., & Rose, A. (1981). Evaluating the effects of document design principles. Information Design Journal, 2(3–4), 236–243

Online download

Online articles

Moran, K. (2020). How people read online. NN/g. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-people-read-online/

Thesis

Garwood, K. (2014). Plain, but not simple: Plain language research with readers, writers, and texts (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Waterloo.

 

Principle 3 – Readers can easily understand what they find

Books

  • Mayer, R. E. (2020). Multimedia learning (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  • McNamara, D., Graesser, A., McCarthy, P., & Cai, Z. (2014). Automated evaluation of text and discourse with Coh-Metrix. Cambridge University Press.
  • Graesser, A., McNamara, D., & Louwerse, M. (2003). What do readers need to learn in order to process coherence relations in narrative and expository text. In A. Sweet & C. Snow (Eds.), Rethinking reading comprehension (pp. 82–98). Guilford Publications.

Journal articles

  • Colomb, G., & Griffin, J. (2004). Coherence on and off the page: What writers can know about writing coherently. New Literary History, 35(2), 273–301.

  • Crossley, S., Kyle, K., & Dascalu, M. (2019). The Tool for the Automatic Analysis of Cohesion 2.0: Integrating semantic similarity and text overlap. Behavior Research Methods, 51(1), 14–27.

  • Cruz, R., Leonhardt, J., & Pezzuti, T. (2017). Second person pronouns enhance consumer involvement and brand attitude. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 39, 104–116.

  • Ferreira, F. (2003). The misinterpretation of noncanonical sentences. Cognitive Psychology, 47(2), 164–203.

  • Fields, E., & Kuperberg, G. (2012). It’s all about you: An ERP study of emotion and self‐relevance in discourse. NeuroImage, 62, 562–574.

  • Gibson, E. (1998). Linguistic complexity: Locality of syntactic dependencies. Cognition, 68(1), 1–76.

  • Glenberg, A. M. (2011). How reading comprehension is embodied and why that matters. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 4(1), 5–18.

  • Just, M., & Carpenter, P. (1992). A capacity theory of comprehension: Individual differences in working memory. Psychological Review, 99, 122–149.

  • Marks, C., Doctorow, M., & Wittrock, M. (1974). Word frequency and reading comprehension. The Journal of Educational Research, 67(6), 259–262.

  • Martínez, E., Mollica, F., & Gibson, E. (2022). Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives processing difficulty in legal language. Cognition, 224, 105064.

  • Masson, M., & Waldron, A. (1994). Comprehension of legal contracts by non-experts: Effectiveness of plain language redrafting. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 8, 67–85.

  • Morid, M., Griffiths, S. W., & Zamuner, T. S. (2020). The representation of concrete versus abstract words: An eye-tracking study. Proceedings of the 2020 Annual Conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association.

  • Rayner, K., Ashby, J., Pollatsek, A., & Reichle, E. (2004). The effects of frequency and predictability on eye fixations in reading: Implications for the EZ reader model. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 30(4).

  • Walker, I., & Hulme, C. (1999). Concrete words are easier to recall than abstract words: Evidence for a semantic contribution to short-term serial recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 25(5), 1256.

  • Zander, S., Reichelt, M., Wetzel, S., Kammerer, F., & Bertel, S. (2015). Does personalization promote learners’ attention? An eye‐tracking study. Frontline Learning Research, 3, 1–13.

Book chapter

Flower, L., Hayes, J. R., & Swarts, H. (1983). Revising functional documents: The scenario principle. In P. V. Anderson, R. J. Brockmann, & C. R. Miller (Eds.), New essays in technical and scientific communication. Taylor & Francis Group.

Dissertation

Kyle, K. (2016). Measuring syntactic development in L2 writing: Fine-grained indices of syntactic complexity and usage-based indices of syntactic sophistication [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Georgia State University.

 

Principle 4 – Readers can easily use the information

Books

Redish, J. G. (2012). Letting go of the words: Writing web content that works (2nd ed.). Morgan Kaufmann.

 

Cross cutting

Books

  • Adler, M., & Perry, P. (2017). Clarity for lawyers: Effective legal language (3rd ed.). Law Society.

  • Asprey, M. (2010). Plain language for lawyers (4th ed.). Federation Press.

  • Butt, P. (2013). Modern legal drafting (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

  • Dickerson, F. (1965). Fundamentals of legal drafting. Little, Brown & Company.

  • Garner, B. (1999). Securities disclosures in plain English. University of Chicago Press.

  • Garner, B. (2013). Legal writing in plain English (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press.

  • Garner, B. (2015). Guidelines for drafting and editing legislation. RosePen Books.

  • Kimble, J. (2006). Lifting the fog of legalese: Essays on plain language. Carolina Academic Press.

  • Kimble, J. (2012). Writing for dollars, writing to please: The case for plain language in business, government, and law. Carolina Academic Press.

  • Kimble, J. (2017). Seeing through legalese: More essays on plain language. Carolina Academic Press.

  • Mowat, C. (2015). A plain language handbook for legal writers (2nd ed.). Carswell.

  • Murawski, T. (1999). Writing readable regulations. Carolina Academic Press.

  • Schiess, W. (2019). Plain legal writing: Do it. Independently Published

Journal articles

  • Block, S. (2009). From plain language to business language. The Clarity Journal, 61, 8-10.

  • Burt, C. (2009). Laws set the framework for plain language in South Africa. The Clarity Journal, 62, 41-45.

  • Cheek, A. (2011). The Plain Writing Act of 2010: Getting democracy to work for you. Michigan Bar Journal, 90(10), 52-53.

  • Cornelius, E. (2016). An appraisal of plain language in the South African banking sector. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics, 44, 25-50.

  • Denoyelle, C. (2019). Project flavour: Plain language for the legal sector. The Clarity Journal, 80, 39-41.

  • Di Pietro, T. (2019). Accelerating the shift to plain language within financial institutions. The Clarity Journal, 80, 23-26.

  • Fine, D. (2001). Plain language and developing human rights materials. The Clarity Journal, 46, 8-10.

  • Green, N. (2020). Implementing plain language as a strategic priority. PLAIN e-journal, 2, 22-23.

  • Slabbert, S., & Green, N. (2018). A plain language standard for Afrikaans. The Clarity Journal, 79, 35-39.

  • Tiersma, P. (1993). Reforming the language of jury instructions. Hofstra Law Review, 22, 37.

  • Kieffer, M. (2010). Socioeconomic status, English proficiency, and late-emerging reading difficulties. Educational Researcher, 39(6), 484-486.

  • Masson, M., & Waldron, M. (1994). Comprehension of legal contracts by non-experts: Effectiveness of plain language redrafting. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 8(1), 67-85.

  • Azuelos-Atias, S. (2018). Making legal language clear to legal laypersons. Legal Pragmatics, 288, 101.

Online download

Van den Berg, I., Slabbert, S., & Green, N. (2019). Bridging the gap between researchers and respondents: An innovative methodology to improve data integrity. Technical note. [Online]. Available from: https://plain-language.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/4-Bridging-the-gap.pdf

Online articles

Legislation

United States of America. (2010). Plain Writing Act of 2010. [Online]. Available from: https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111hr946enr/pdf/BILLS-111hr946enr.pdf

Dissertations

  • Bivins, P. (2008). Implementing plain language into legal documents: The technical communicator’s role (Doctoral dissertation, University of Central Florida).

  • Cornelius, E. (2012). ‘n Linguistiese ondersoek na die verstaanbaarheid van verbruikersdokumente vir die algemene Afrikaanssprekende publiek (Master’s thesis, University of Johannesburg).

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