NEED FOR BREVTIY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 303, 30 September 1940, Page 8

NEED FOR BREVTIY.

CIVIL SERVICE REPORTS. MR CHURCHILL’S ORDER. ' LONDON, August 26. “Be brief” says a message sent by the Prime Minister, Mr Winston Churchill, to the heads of Civil Service departments. Mr Churchill objects to official jargon and long-winded notes. “To do our work we all have to read a mass of papers,” he says in instructions, “Nearly all of them are fax* too long. This wastes timO while energy has to be spent in looking for the essential points. I ask my colleagues and thenstaffs to see to it that their reports arc shorter.

' “The aim should he reports which set out the main, points in a series of short, crisp paragraphs. If a report relies on detailed analysis of some . complicate! factors, or on statistics, these should be set in an appendix. Often the occasion 'is best met by submitting, not a fulldress report, but an aide-memoire consisting of headings only, which can be expanded orally if needed. Let us have an end to such phrases as those: —‘lt is also of importance to bear in mind the following considerations . . . ’ or ‘Consideration should be given to the possibility of carrying into effect . . .’ “Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be. left out altogether, or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational.”

Mr Churchill’s dictum has been welcomed on the whole in "Whitehall, although it has caused learned and sometimes heated —discussions. Certain Ministries may decide to scrap the style in which official correspondence is written.

Mr W. J. Brown (general secretary of the Civil Service Clerical Association) who has a considerable flair for vivid writing, said that he and thousands of members were delighted with Mr Churchill’s step. There is no doubt that the Civil Service has developed a stylo of English peculiar to itself. It is pvosv, ponderous 'and pontifical.