Fortunately, so far, we haven't needed to send folks there. Even better news is that a child's dosage (age 4-18) has been approved and will be available in a few weeks.

National Institutes of Health - FDA's sister-agency, NIH, is another strong force in making sure that the public receives plain & clear health-related information. Both former Acting NIH Director, Ruth Kirschstein, who launched NIH's active Plain Language program, and the new Director, Elias Zerhouni, enthusiastically support this initiative. NIH is so large, they convened a formal Plain Language Coordinating Committee with a representative from every Institute, Center and Office within NIH.

The Coordinating Committee does a great job spreading the Plain Language message to all of NIH's thousands of employees. They decided to have a separate Plain Language award ceremony every year to recognize the authors of easy-to-understand NIH pubs.

The first year, they had 100 submissions, and last year over 150. These ceremonies feature local media personalities. The first year, Michael Dirda, well-known Washington Post book critic gave the keynote speech. This year, Susan Dentzer from the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer did. Taking a page from the governments Homeland Security Alert system, she proposed a color-coded Plain Language Alert System for judging clear writing. Let me share it with you:

Blue Alert	—	Hifalutin' language ahead. Soaring over everybody's heads, like the sky
Black Alert	—	Stultifying prose - can't see your way thru to the end of the tunnel
Brown Alert	—	Obfuscatory: lots of you-know-what to wade through
Purple Alert	—	Too many ruffles & flourishes, as in purple prose

All Clear Language Alert

—

Clear…as a bell. Utterly transparent, like a cool mountain stream. Really beautiful!

In conclusion -- While some Plan Language champions are disappointed that there is no longer an official U.S. Government-wide push for plain language, the agencies that took the initiative to heart a few years ago are gratified to realize that we don't necessarily need a Call to Action to come from the very highest levels.

Once we published a number of plainly written documents, others in the Federal government recognized that we were doing a good job in getting information to our audiences. The Plain Language style is truly taking on a life of its own. And while we'd welcome more official support, we are making progress in the meantime.

I hope you'll join me tomorrow for the Plenary Session on Plain Language Around the World, where you'll hear about Plain Language progress in other U.S. agencies.

Thank you.