PLAin canada's plain and simple vol. 6

Welcome!

This edition of the newsletter recaps 2022 for Plain Canada Clair. Our featured member is our organization (smile). Along with our recap, we briefly outline some next steps for our organization. As this is a year-end review, we will complete the series on how to estimate your fee in our next newsletter. 

Don’t miss our Patron’s Corner to learn about PLAIN International events and the Cheryl Stephens Innovation Award.

As always, please email comments and questions to plaincanadaclair@gmail.com. If you’re interested and available to volunteer a few hours a month, please let us know. 

We wish you all the best for 2023. 
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Thank you/Merci,
Jocelyn Pletz and Chantale Audet

Upcoming Events

February 13 - PLAIN Canada CLAIR Social (English)

We’ll be talking about accessibility and the strengths and weaknesses of on-line tools for our practice. We’ll also talk about plain language awards people can apply for this winter. Please join us for the discussion!

March 13 - PLAIN Canada CLAIR social (French)

We haven’t set topics yet and we are interested to hear your suggestions. Please send your topic ideas to plaincanadaclair@gmail.com.

Plain Canada Clair - Our Year

This has been a busy year for Plain Canada Clair! We grew from informal networking on LinkedIn to an organization with bylaws and a bank account. We are set to grow and promote the growth of plain language writing and design in Canada.

October 18, we held our first annual conference – online in both French and English. It was our first participatory conference, and we look forward to more events like that. We thank all who presented and all who attended; we learned from you (and from the process). The opportunity to hear of your experiences in the provinces and territories was valuable.

We held several professional development sessions. We are grateful that we had a variety of presentations for you – some in French and some in English. The topics included

• communicating change
• using plain language design principles when developing charts, graphs, and tables 
• understanding how to protect your online reputation. 

Isabelle Ladouceur-Séguin explained linguistic conservatism and plain language in written French to help us understand how complicated it is to use plain language in French.

We improved and expanded our bilingual website and social media. We are growing each month; new followers sign up through LinkedIn, Eventbrite, and Facebook.

Our newsletter is available in both French and English. We have introduced several members of the volunteer group who are building Plain Canada Clair. We love receiving your feedback and we know that our articles are helpful as you grow your practice.

Next steps

We are a small group of volunteers, and we need your help!
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Please email us at plaincanadaclair@gmail.com if you are interested in getting involved. Short-term initiatives include growing our membership and developing resources for practitioners. As well, submissions for the newsletter are welcomed and encouraged.

Membership

Starting soon, we will be offering a paid membership to plain language practitioners. Your membership will give you free access to monthly webinars, as well as ongoing access to all recordings from past sessions. You will also be helping Plain Canada Clair to expand our advocacy initiatives.

​Cost will be $25 per year. 

Patron's Corner - By Cheryl Stephens

The Cheryl Stephens Innovation Award of Plain Language Association International (PLAIN) honours innovation in plain language practices. The purpose of the award is to recognize advancements in our field.
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Wondering if you meet the criteria as an innovator? Dictionaries define innovation as a new idea, method, or device or the process of making an idea or invention into a good or service. The Conference Board of Canada and Business Development Canada add social and economic value to their definition. Please start thinking about nominations for your own or someone else’s work.

I appreciate that this award honours me as one of PLAIN’s co-founders and my contributions to our movement. The award will be presented at the next PLAIN conference in Argentina in 2023.

Also, I continue to offer my Fireside Chats are every month on the 2nd of each month (at noon Pacific; 3:00 p.m. Eastern). Go to Eventbrite to learn more about how to participate. These sessions are open to everyone in the Plain Canada Clair community. Don’t be shy!