Be it resolved that because 67 percent of government Web sites are written at a 12th-grade or higher level, whereas the average comprehension level in the United States is eighth grade, that henceforth government workers communicating with the public knock it off.

And you in business, stop snickering. You aren’t doing anybody any favors with your synergies, paradigms and value-addeds either. Take it offline, please.

Maybe you had a misguided teacher who told you that big words are better than little ones. Maybe you needed extra words to fill out those dreaded 500-word essays. Maybe your boss taught you that jargon is power. But, really, the rest of us aren’t impressed. In fact, we’re mighty irritated at your arrogance. It’s especially irksome to be treated this way by people on public payrolls.

Brown University has been studying information on government Web sites for several years and has found that language choices alienate large swaths of our population.

Language matters. Just ask millions of senior citizens trying to unlock the government’s pompous prose as they scrambled to meet Monday’s deadline for picking a prescription drug plan. Fully 40 percent of them read at a fifth-grade level. Government instructions were written on a seventh-grade to post-college level. To what end?

Instead of serving the public, government workers serve themselves with sentences such as this one from the Official Gazette, which can be found at the city of Spokane’s Web site:

At the time and place fixed, and at other such times as the Hearing may be continued to, the City Hearing Examiner will sit as a Board of Equalization for the purpose of considering said roll, and at such Hearing, or Hearings, will consider such objections made thereto, or any part thereof, and will correct, revise, raise, lower, change or modify such roll, or any part thereof, or set aside such roll and order that such assessment be made de novo.

If the city were truly trying to communicate something there, it would’ve done so in a simple declarative sentence. No “theretos” and “thereofs.” No Latin. The public shouldn’t have to consult a legal dictionary to understand what its employees are up to.

The state of Washington is making a push for “plain talk” in government. Gov. Chris Gregoire signed an executive order last year for workers to make government understandable, because “it shows our respect for people and their time.”

Exactly.

You want to impress someone with your dazzling ability to utilize obfuscation in the conveyance of data points contained herein, do it on your own time, bub.

We’re paying you to communicate with us. That should be your only agenda when you sit down to write.