In an earlier post, I wrote about the ambiguity that inheres in the use of the word “shall”. In researching the topic, I discovered that last fall, President Barack Obama signed the “Plain Writing Act of 2010” into law. Ironically, the Act requires that ”each agency shall use plain writing in every covered document of the agency that the agency issues or substantially revises.” (Apparently, Congress didn’t feel that the Act itself should use plain writing.) A few months later, the President issued Executive Order No. 13563, Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review. The order states that “[our regulatory system] must ensure that regulations are accessible, consistent, written in plain language, and easy to understand.”
The Plain Language Action and Information Network (PLAIN) is a group of federal employees in various agencies that have developed guidelines for plain language. I’m pleased to say that PLAIN also favors the use of “must” over “shall” which it decries as officious and obsolete...
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