Editing Plain language (section)

===1900 to 1950===
Two 1921 works, Harry Kitson's "The Mind of the Buyer", and [[Edward L. Thorndike]]'s "The Teacher's Word Book" picked up where Sherman left off. Kitson's work was the first to apply empirical psychology to advertising. He advised the use of short words and sentences. Thorndike's work contained the frequency ratings of 10,000 words. He recommended using the ratings in his book to grade books not only for students in schools but also for average readers and adults learning English. Thorndike wrote:

<blockquote>
It is commonly assumed that children and adults prefer trashy stories in large measure because they are more exciting and more stimulating in respect to sex. There is, however, reason to believe that greater ease of reading in respect to vocabulary, construction, and facts, is a very important cause of preference. A count of the vocabulary of "best sellers" and a summary of it in terms of our list would thus be very instructive.
</blockquote>

The 1930s saw many studies on how to make texts more readable. In 1931, Douglas Tyler and Ralph Waples published the results of their two-year study, "What People Want to Read About". In 1934, Ralph Ojemann, [[Edgar Dale]], and Ralph Waples published two studies on writing for adults with limited reading ability. In 1935, educational psychologist [[William S. Gray]] teamed up with Bernice Leary to publish their study, "What Makes a Book Readable".

[[George Orwell]]'s 1946 essay "[[Politics and the English Language]]" decried the pretentious diction, meaninglessness, vagueness, and worn-out idioms of political jargon. In 1979, the [[Plain English Campaign]] was founded in London to combat "gobbledegook, jargon and legalese".<ref>Plain English Campaign. Retrieved August 16, 2011, from: http://www.plainenglish.co.uk</ref>