It's a fair cop for Police Force copy Tuesday April 27, 2010
My heroes
Superheroes of content, faithful keepers of clear copy…call them what you will, the Plain English Campaign have done it again. And it’s not the first time I’ve celebrated this organisation’s swift action on confusing copy.
Copy minus the content
This time the ambassadors of clarity in content have condemned the Police. The offender? A headline, recently featured in a public document from the Cambridgeshire Police and the Cambridge Community Safety Partnership:
“Police continue to target offenders”
The Campaign rightly argued that this was an attempt to turn the plain obvious into news, as was the statement in the document that one priority for 2010 was “reducing offending”.
Reminding your audience of the essentials can be a very good thing. But as the Plain English Campaign rightly pointed out, this really is a case of no news being bad news.
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