Tuesday, 16 October 2007

Plain English Campaign on Donald Rumsfeld

The US defence secretary scooped the Plain English Campaign's premier Foot In Mouth trophy for his 62-word attempt to clarify a point to a defence department meeting: "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know".

"We think we know what he means", said John Lister, a Plain English campaign spokesman, "but we don't know if we really know".

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