Go Ahead, Explain It

A blog post about plain language tells writers, “Your instructions should be easy enough for a grandmother to follow.” What?!?

Clearly, the author wanted an example of “people who struggle to understand” and decided on “older women.” Probably thought it was funny. Hmm.

Sometimes, the problem is not our specific vocabulary.

We don’t need a different word for “grandmother” in that sentence. We need to look at how and why grandparents are considered the appropriate butt of someone’s joke that says some-people-are-slow-to-learn … and end that.

BTW, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a grandmother. Maybe someone could explain this to her.