William Lutz

While searching for something else, I chanced to come across Bill Lutz, an old friend from the University of Nevada. Over the years, our paths have crossed briefly a time or two, but then we seem to lose track of each other. Perhaps that is my fault; I have never been very good at maintaining a correspondence. That is neither here nor there.

Nevertheless, some links may be of interest:

  • “Rules for Writing Plain English” may not say a whole lot that Strunk and White  do not, more famously, but this is very succinct, all on one page for quick reference. http://www.plainlanguagenetwork.org/Resources/lutz.htm
  • I am not sure of the original purpose of “Statement of William Lutz.” Because it is a sworn statement, I suspect it was written for some sort of formal hearing, legislative, judicial or otherwise. He says he was asked to review the language used in 168 privacy notices sent by various insurance and financial companies to their customers. Perhaps this is not of particular interest, but I did take interest in the Flesch Readability Index, pp. 2-4. Then, for the rest of the document, he applies the Flesch Index to the “legalese” of these notices. It is not light reading, but if you have ever been baffled by this kind of document, now you will know why. http://epic.org/privacy/glba/vtlutz.pdf
  • Bill, I discover, is an attorney as well as an English professor. In this age of Reformism and test-mania, these comments should give us pause. Paragraph 3 suggests that first comes the curriculum, then comes instructional method, and then, and only then, comes the test. Wow! What a concept! http://comppile.org/archives/NTW/Nov%2088%20PDF%20Files/Lutz%20and%20Anson.pdf
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