Join us this month to learn about how the ISO plain language standard was created.

ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standards are internationally agreed by experts - think of them as a formula that describes the best way of doing something. They’re the distilled wisdom of people with expertise in their subject matter and who know the needs of the organisations they represent.

Now - finally! - we have a plain language standard and our speaker Gael Spivak is a key figure that was on the working group that wrote it. She’s been involved in the project for several years and is looking forward to telling you all about it.

About our speaker

Gael Spivak is a senior writer and editor at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, providing writing and editing support to the food programme.

She’s been a plain language practitioner for many years and as well as being involved in writing the ISO plain language standard, she also chairs the international committee that is helping countries to translate, localise and adopt the standard.

She was on the board of directors for the Editors’ Association of Canada for 10 years, which included being the association’s president. During that time, she was also the co-chair of the first international editing conference (and was well into planning the second one when the pandemic struck). She is also a moderator in several international communities of practice for editors.