Little Red Riding Hood (LRRH)

Since I didn't run today and don't have anything compelling to write about running, I thought I'd write about writing. Writing for this blog is liberating, considering what I do for a living.

I work for state government and I'm an attorney, so I tend to get mired down in bureaucratic technical jargon. I oversee rule writing for certain government programs, and we have great debates over the meaning of a word or phrase when we are trying to convey a complicated concept in a rule. We work closely with advocates who help us communicate policies to our constituents in a way that we hope is understandable to them.

I ran across a great website that centers on plain language initiatives in the federal government. This is a fantastic idea. Some of the federal agencies we work with have embraced this approach; others have not gotten the hang of it yet.

The website has examples of government writing converted to plain language. But what I loved most was this:

Little Red Riding Hood
At a previous but undetermined timeframe, a single-family domestic domicile was inhabited by a young girl, known as Little Red Riding Hood (LRRH), and her Maternal Parent (MP). The Maternal Parent (MP) had once provided for the fabrication of an article of clothing, a cloak in nature (including a "hood" or protective covering for the head of the wearer), that was RGB code [255,0,0] in hue (aka, "red"). As a result of this action, and the resultant repeated usage of the "hood", the young girl was always known as LRRH in substitution for the name identified on her birth certificate and other identifying documentation.

During one 24-hour interval, a request was issued by the MP for LRRH to deliver a package to the MP's Maternal Parent (MPMP) (genealogically identified as the Grandmaternal Unit (GU) with respects to LRRH).

This package was to include:

• cheesecakes
• fresh butter
• one dozen (12) strawberries....

Read the entire article here.