Plain English Awards

celebrate New Zealand's clearest communicators

Behind the scenes — introducing our 2019 People’s Choice judges

Who’s the best and who’s the worst? Our panel of expert judges will make this year’s tough decisions. Image by Emily Morter. Unsplash licence.

Every year we’re honoured to enlist the support of plain language specialists from around New Zealand and the world to judge entries and nominations in our Awards. This year’s People’s Choice Awards are no different.


The exciting task of deciding who’s best

For our Best Communication category, we’re delighted to announce Deanna Lorianni, communications strategist from Virginia, USA, as panel chair. She’ll be joined by plain language specialists Emma Fossey in Scotland and Paula Shelton in Auckland. Together Deanna, Emma, and Paula will make the tough decision on which of your nominations is this year’s plain language superstar.

The difficult job of sorting bad from worse

For our Brainstrain category, we’re lucky enough to have the expert eye of two judges who’ve been part of this panel for several years: Simon Hertnon from Nakedize, who’ll be chairing the panel, and Sue Chetwin from Consumer — we’re excited to have them back! Simon and Sue will be joined by the equally valuable Paula van Gemen, plain language specialist from the Netherlands.

Read more about who’s on this year’s judging panels