Plain English Awards

celebrate New Zealand's clearest communicators

Fly my pretties! What happens to your entries after you press ‘submit’

What happens to the documents you've nominated once they're entered? Image by Lorie Shaull. Flickr licence.

Submitting your entry in this year’s People’s Choice Awards is one thing. What happens to your entry after that is another.


Your nomination joins the list so experts can decide who’s best and worst

After you submit a nomination, it joins a catalogue of other entries in our professional submission platform Submittable, where it’ll sit until entries officially close. Soon after that, the Awards administrators open up entries for the Best and Worst categories to their respective judging panels.

Our judges then sort through entries to come up with a shortlist, followed by a more in-depth assessment to create a list of finalists.
Finally, the judges decide which entries are our ultimate winners. This year’s winners will be announced on Thursday, 28 November.

The judges assess the entries using plain English criteria

Because our Awards are all about plain English, our judges use specific criteria to decide which entries are best and which are worst. These criteria are based on the following aspects of clear communication:

  • Purpose
  • Structure
  • Usability (for websites)
  • Headings and main messages
  • Paragraphs
  • Sentences
  • Words
  • Layout and presentation

Read more about our judging criteria
Find out how to nominate communications

Thanks to the Wellington band Fly My Pretties for being the inspiration for our blog title! Visit their website flymypretties.com