Newspeak

Vice President Al Gore called a press conference to give an award to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He presented the first Plain Language (“No Gobbledygook”) Award to OSHA for rewriting a rule relating to “dipping tanks”. The rule previously took two paragraphs totaling 79 words and cited 15 examples. The new award-winning language took seven paragraphs totaling 61 words, and included no examples. (Reuters) ...OSHA was very happy to accept the reward, its administrator noting that “comprehensible endeavors to eradicate inordinately excessive verbiage, circumlocution, and periphrasis from agency articulations is a perennial process.”