About us

Clear English India (CEI) is an initiative by a group of four plain English campaigners in Kolkata. It was set up in May 2005.

CEI founders

• Mr Jyoti Sanyal is the author of Write it Right: The Statesman Style Book, which is till date the only newspaper stylebook for English-language newspapers in India (about 415 such newspapers are published in India). The 577-page stylebook is an authoritative work on how to rid Indian English of the commercialese, officialese, legalese, jargon, and circumlocution that it reeks of.

His second book Indlish, published by Viva Books, is now available at all leading book stores in India. Indlish is a compilation of Mr Sanyal's articles on plain English first printed in his column in The Statesman.

Mr Sanyal was formerly Dean of Asian College of Journalism, Bangalore, and an assistant editor with The Statesman, Calcutta.

He coached technical writers at Tektronix India, Bangalore, and edited technical copy for Stratify Inc. (formerly Purple Yogi). He edited the journal of the Vivekananda Institute of Medical Sciences, Calcutta. He conducts workshops on English communication skill and has held them in Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Bombay and Hyderabad.

• Mr Ajoy John, Creative Consultant for Kolkata Environmental Improvement Project (KEIP), is much sought after for his innovative print and web design work. Among his clients are KEIP, UNICEF, ICICI Bank Ltd, Kolkata Police, Child in Need Institute, Kolkata, and several NGOs. Earlier, he worked with The Statesman, Calcutta, and redesigned and edited Saturday Statesman and Imprint, the Sunday Statesman supplement.

• Mr Akshay Datta was formerly on the management staff of Siemens India, and on the faculty of the Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management, Calcutta University. He specialised in marketing and foreign trade. He has long, practical experience in the management of big specialised hospitals.

• Ms Chhanda Chakraborty holds a doctorate in English from Calcutta University, and is head of the department of English, Vidyasagar College for Women, Kolkata.

CEI is a corporate member of Plain Language Commission, UK. Plain Language Commission (PLC) was set up in Britain in 1994 by Martin Cutts, who also co-founded the Plain English campaign in 1979. He showed that the legalese and inflated language of official forms and leaflets was unnecessary and unethical, and visited India four times in the 1990s to promote his message.

Mr Cutts is author of the Oxford Guide to Plain English, published by Oxford University Press, and has been one of the inspirations behind the creation of CEI.

Our campaign:

Going by sheer numbers, India is the third largest English-speaking country in the world. English came to India through merchants of the East India Company, and there lies the problem with Indian English: we cling to the dead commercial language of a colonial past. It would be no exaggeration to say that Indlish is a khichri of commercialese, officialese, and legalese.

We seek to promote the living language that modern English is. And, we believe that it is possible and necessary to write in plain language at all times, unless one intends to suppress information.

The government must draft all laws in plain language, be it in English or any regional language, because the citizen has a right to know what the government is up to. The citizen is expected to obey the law, and therefore has the right to easily understand what the law says.

Industry, too, must adopt plain language standards. Our case studies page shows that this can only mean good news for the bottom line.

Professionals like lawyers, doctors, or scientists must communicate in clear language when it’s a lay audience. But studies show that it doesn’t hurt to avoid jargon as far as possible even when the message is meant for professionals.

Remember: if what you say is incomprehensible, you have no right to expect others to listen to you.