Got to love this. Slate Labs has demoed a plain English widget which takes wordy jargon from any industry and turns it quickly into very plain English.
The widget turns this:
Household spending is increasing gradually, but remains constrained by high unemployment, modest income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit.
into this:
People are spending a little bit more, but they’re stretched thin: One in 10 workers can’t find a job, wages are basically flat, home prices are way down and nobody can get a loan.
Every office should have one.
Slate is looking for suggestions on how to use the tool, and adds this disclaimer: Plain English does not automatically generate translations. Rather, it’s a tool that lets readers toggle between the original text and a human-written “translation”.
All Evolving Newsroom
A plain English widget
Got to love this. Slate Labs has demoed a plain English widget which takes wordy jargon from any industry and turns it quickly into very plain English.
The widget turns this:
into this:
Every office should have one.
Slate is looking for suggestions on how to use the tool, and adds this disclaimer: Plain English does not automatically generate translations. Rather, it’s a tool that lets readers toggle between the original text and a human-written “translation”.