M-hmmn, and actually for plain language I mean those are the kinds of data that plain language writers are collecting, such as how much time was saved by the organization not having to answer customer questions and complaints, and then of course how much money gets saved, how much customer satisfaction is there. And those are three really big measures that we can look at in different contexts.

Reputation means a lot when you're looking for repeat customers for the upgraded version. Uh, John thanks for your call. Janet in Kanata. Hi Janet!

Hi there, how are you?

Good. Who needs a lesson in plain language?

Um, the guys--and I'll be specific--the guys that are writing all those labour relations collective agreements. I think there's a tendency with the men to put in language, that it's a one-upmanship kind of thing.
[missed section on tape]...add a few words in here or there, beef up some areas, try to resolve some specific problems with a broad brush, and make their language very broad so they think it will capture everything. And in the end you have no idea what anyone is talking about: sections that should be together aren't, and there are things that are all over the place, and so it's very very difficult to understand them sometimes.

Do you have an example of--if not sort of asking you to read something but a situation that you got caught in?

Oh, no, I've just dealt with a lot of collective agreements and the one place I worked in, Windsor, we were at a hospital and at one point we had nine collective agreements going all at the same time. And even if you had similar bargaining units, the language was all different. What do they mean by a "date of hire" for some things? Is it your seniority date? Is it the day you walked in the door this time, or is it the date you first got hired four years ago before you quit four times and got hired back five times --what is it?

So there's a lot of those. I can't give you a specific one, but they're very difficult to read sometimes because they're referring to different things in different sections and not being very clear about it.

And I'm wondering Michelle whether that might be the result of, ya know, sort of last-minute quick negotiations to try and prevent some sort of work stoppage.