Calgary aldermen to vote on clear writing

City hall is considering a new policy on plain language to rid documents of jargon and indecipherable acronyms.

A Calgary council committee approved the policy on Tuesday morning and the proposal will be put to city council later this month. Ald. Druh Farrell filed the motion, arguing it's critical that city information is "clear, concise and user-friendly."

Mayor Naheed Nenshi says clear writing just makes sense. 

"Honestly, some of these council reports are incomprehensible, particularly when they come down to planning issues."

The only alderman to vote against it was Diane Colley-Urquhart, who says it's ridiculous an audit was done on city documents to figure out how well they're written.

"We've got much better things to do and it really affects our credibility when we get into these debates on shark fins and plain language and other things like that when we have really serious topics to discuss," she said.

The guidelines call for clear writing, with no more than 15 words per sentence and ensuring acronym definitions are included so anyone reading a document for the first time can figure out what it means.