Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> Toxoplasmosis is a common infection that you can catch from the poo of infected cats, or infected meat. It's usually harmless but can cause serious problems in some people

The UK governments approach to using normal, simple language across all its web assets is fantastic.



They've published an excellent blog about their language choices at https://digital.nhs.uk/blog/transformation-blog/2019/pee-and...


Yeah

I feel that medical language in the UK is dumbed down for your average (and let me reiterate again, average) person

Which is good for the majority but slightly unnerving if you don't like being talked down or wants to know what is really happening and have anything above very basic medical knowledge


How is the above quote dumbed down? To me it seems it is just ... communicated well.


I was speaking more generically, I agree that those pages do a great job of communicating.

But in general healthcare communication in the UK (and Ireland) do feel like they're dumbing down stuff for you


Could you provide an example?


“crystal mark english” is what to tell your LLM to write in.


I'd never heard of it. The "crystal mark" itself is a money-making thing for what seems to be a for-profit company: https://www.plainenglish.co.uk/services/crystal-mark.html


Would LLMs be guilty of trademark infringement?

Llama said its in CM. Gemini said "aiming for Crystal Mark". OpenAI called its output "plain, clear" without mentioning CM. Claude didnt comment its output. Deepseek returned "Here is your passage rewritten in clear, polished English with a refined and elegant tone—what you might call "Crystal Mark English"".




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: