Judge: Plain Language Champion — Best Individual or Team

Senior Editor, Alexforbes, Johannesburg, South Africa

Sawubona! This is a Zulu greeting from Africa that means ‘I see you’. It’s so much more than a traditional hello — it means I see your personality, your humanity, your dignity. And the response is Yebo, sawubona (‘Yes, we see you too’). Much like this warm greeting, the best communication is also rooted in empathy — welcoming the reader by the words we use. Writing like real people to other people.

Irene champions clear communication as a director of Plain Language Association International, a senior editor at Alexforbes, and a founding director of the Professional Editors’ Guild in South Africa. She enjoys the challenge of problem solving as part of a team of writers and designers to make ‘the complicated simple, awesomely simple’ (Charles Mingus).

Meet the judges for the Plain Language Awards

How the judging process works