British government BANS abbreviations of Latin origin from its websites in case they prove too confusing to non-English speakers

These abbreviations are as well known as many ordinary English words so are we going to ban all less common words?  To be consistent one would have to.  A Google search reveals 2 billion uses of "etc" while "Gender" returns only one billion.  So should we ban "gender" from use?  Could be a good idea, come to  think of it

Common Latin abbreviations will be removed from all government websites, in a move to help non-English speakers.

Terms including eg, ie and etc will no longer appear on Gov.UK sites, as there are 'better, clearer ways' of communicating the same meanings, while also helping those who 'didn't grow up speaking English'.

Gov.uk, created by the Government Digital Service (GDS), provides a single point of access to all Government departments and public bodies.

Explaining the decision, GDS content manager Persis Howe said: 'We promote the use of plain English on GOV.UK. 'We advocate simple, clear language. Terms like eg, ie and etc, while common, make reading difficult for some.

'Anyone who didn’t grow up speaking English may not be familiar with them. 'Even those with high literacy levels can be thrown if they are reading under stress or are in a hurry - like a lot of people are on the web. So we’re phasing them out.'

Such terms also cause problems for people who are visually impaired, because programs designed to read web pages pronounce them incorrectly.

She added: 'Most people who use these programs are used to their quirks, but it’s jarring to hear the wrong words.

'And while ‘eg’ gets read correctly by screen readers, there are better, clearer ways of introducing examples for all users.'

SOURCE