Plain English and UI
While surfing wiki, I found a link to the Plain English Campaign. I often see their little diamond symbol on forms and terms of agreement from UK companies. The Plain English Guide is an incredibly useful explanation of how to make writing clearer. It is, of course, very clearly written itself.
Writing clearly is an important skill when developing user interfaces. Many years ago, I worked in the development team responsible for UML modeling tools. Back then, we had the luxury of a dedicated technical writer reviewing every single line of text that was displayed to the user by the tool. Jump forward to JDeveloper 10g: there's so much user interface text it would be a huge burden on our technical writers to review all of it. Instead we rely on a set of guidelines, diligent developers and occasional peer reviews.
In practice, this approach has worked well. The user interface text guidelines written by our usability group are very specific and easy to follow. Not everyone has the luxury of a usability group, which is why freely available guides such as the Plain English Guide are so valuable.
... and for some light comic relief, try Plain English Campaign's Golden Bull awards...
2:28:43 PM 
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