Live demo

Try it: check a member notice for plain language

This is the working version of the plain-language notice tutorial. It counts the sentences in a notice you paste, flags long sentences, possible passive phrasing, abbreviations and hard terms from your own word list, and shows the counts for a rewrite beside the original. It leaves the rewriting and the meaning check to people.

How this lab works

• It counts and flags. Nothing is rewritten, and the download holds flag types, sentence numbers and matched words only, with no sentences from your notice.
• It gives no reading grade. Grade formulas are not used here, because the sources linked in the tutorial say they miss whether readers can use the text.
• The passive flag is a guess. It looks for a form of "to be" followed by a word that ends in -ed or -en, or a short list of common irregular verbs. It can flag a sentence that is fine and miss one that is not.
• The settings are yours. The 20 and the 30 are examples, not standards.
• The sample is synthetic. It is one invented dues notice and one invented rewrite. It shows what the counts do, not how accurate they are on real notices.
• Local text only. The script is served from this site and the page makes no other request for your text.

Starter kit

The starter kit holds this page to run on your own computer, the same counts as a script, the sample notice and rewrite, a word-list template, a review checklist and a before-and-after log. Free with your email through the form below; the download link appears after you subscribe.