Budget airline Pacific Blue and the United States Embassy in Wellington have won awards they probably don't want.
The two organisations won "brainstrain document" prizes - rubbish bins - last night at the 2008 New Zealand Plain English Awards for poorly worded or badly organised documents.
Pacific Blue scored with its terms and conditions of carriage, something the judges described as almost impossible to understand in some places.
The American Embassy won because its "confusing government-speak gave its website an unfriendly and impersonal tone".
Premier award of $10,000 for plain English went to New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE), the Government's economic development agency.
The award acknowledged the company's outstanding progress in creating an organisation-wide plain English culture.
Dr Neil James, executive director of the Sydney-based Plain English Foundation, who helped judge the awards, said New Zealand punched above its weight in using plain English.
"The 120 entries shows there is widespread awareness in New Zealand of the value of plain English."
He added New Zealanders were obviously ahead of much of the English-speaking world in understanding the need for saying it simply.
However, the brainstrain awards did show New Zealand was not perfect.
