In an ideal world, the deluge of information that comes our way from the tax office, insurance com pa nies, lawyers, computer software compa - nies, and suchlike would be written in plain English. Sadly, the reader is often left with the impression either that the author does not want us to understand the text, or that the author does not understand the concepts and, therefore, cannot explain them to anyone else. The main reason for using plain English in medical writing is so that any reasonable person can understand our written language and gather from it the messages we intend to convey.