Lingua inglese - Appunti

Manuale di Stile. Strumenti per Semplificare il Linguaggio delle Amministrazioni Pubbliche

Manuale di Stile. Strumenti per Semplificare il Linguaggio delle Amministrazioni Pubbliche was first published in 1997. The manual provides practical advice on how to draft administrative documents, regulations, contracts etc (see Francesca Nassi's review in Clarity No. 47 (page 23).

Gathering momentum

The most fruitful period in the drive towards the simplification of administrative language in Italy seems to have been between 1994 and 2002. It was in 1994 that the scheme for rewriting administrative documents was launched with Sabino Cassese as Minister (his Codice di Stile of 1993 was the forerunner to Fioritto's manual). Under his successor, Franco Bassanini, the project continued to flourish.

On 8 May 2002, with Franco Frattini as Minister, the so-called 'Frattini directive' was introduced calling for an overhaul of administrative language by establishing drafting rules. To help in applying the directive the Progetto Chiaro! was set up that year, with an online consultancy.

Service for local government employees and officials seeking guidance on how to draft administrative documents in accordance with the directive.

The directive's ten 'rules for writing texts'

The first part of the directive contains the (rather opaquely worded) 'rules of communication and legal structure', such as making sure the content of the text is always clear, always having a clear idea of who the recipients of the text will be, inserting information in a logical way, using notes, attachments and tables to lighten the text etc. This is followed by ten 'rules for writing texts':

1. Write short sentences.
2. Use words from everyday language.
3. Use technical terms sparingly and explain them.
4. Use abbreviations and acronyms as little as possible.
5. Use verbs in the active and in the affirmative form.
6. Connect words and sentences briefly and clearly.
7. Be consistent when using

1. Capital letters, small letters and punctuation.

2. Avoid neologisms, foreign words and Latinisms.

3. Use the indicative form rather than the subjunctive where possible.

4. Make sure the text is visually pleasing (i.e. use what modern technology has to offer, but don't get carried away!).

Sentence length, subjunctives and passives

One area where there is certainly room for reform - not just in legal or bureaucratic language - is that of sentence length. Not surprisingly it is put first in the list of rules above. There would seem to be an ingrained tradition in Italy of writing long sentences: anyone perusing the average academic textbook in Italian will see what I mean, with sentences laden with subordinate and parenthetical clauses.

Rule 9 is an interesting case. While subjunctives are almost non-existent in modern English they represent roughly 10 per cent of all verbal constructions in Italian legal texts. But in my opinion their use does not generate any particular ambiguity.

(they always refer to hypothetical situations); they simply make the text sound more formal (people tend to ‘drop’ their subjunctives in informal conversation). And, in common with many other countries, the directive calls for a reduction in the use of the passive, even if it is less frequently adopted in Italian (about 20% of verbal constructions in prescriptive texts are in the passive) than it is in English (about 25%).

Losing momentum

Unfortunately, the momentum favouring language reform came to an abrupt halt not long after the directive was passed, as can be witnessed by visiting the website where the information and documentation have not been updated for three years. When I emailed the address provided on the website for those seeking further information or advice, my email bounced back and I was informed that the user was unknown. The implicit message was, alas, molto chiaro! It was only after further investigation that I was informed that the project had been given a limited time span,

Top down

The hiatus in the activities of the Progetto Chiaro! reveals one of the inherent weaknesses in a movement that springs from within the state itself rather than from the grassroots, namely that much depends on the interests and priorities of individual ministers. This is not to say that the average citizen in Italy does not moan about the incomprehensibility of official documents, but there is simply not much of a tradition in Italy as there is in, say, the UK, in forming pressure groups to do something about it. It is often the case in Italy that reforms take place as a result of adopting models from abroad rather than as a result of pressure from within.

Legal language

There are several possible reasons why legal language tends not to be the main focus of criticism in Italy as it is in most English-speaking countries. First of all, the type of language in which laws are drafted in Italy is not perceived as being as archaic or

Idiosyncratic as it is in English-speaking countries. There are few equivalents to the hereinafters and aforetosaids that sound like something from the Elizabethan age. Laws drafted in Italian may not always be easy to follow, but they do not sound particularly antiquated.

Secondly, like most other countries in continental Europe, by far the most commonly-used tense used in prescriptive texts in Italian is the present indicative, constituting two thirds of all finite verbal constructions. So there is no ambiguity as there is often claimed to be in English between shall and the present tense: in the vast majority of cases shall would be rendered as the present simple in Italian. Può and possono (respectively, third person singular and plural of the modal verb potere = to be able to) are the equivalent of may,