Instructions of the Central Committee of the CPC on Rectifying Linguistic Deficiencies in Telegrams, Reports, Directives, and Decisions [1] (February 1, 1951) To comrades serving as leading officials of the Party groups in various ministries and commissions under the Central Committee and the Military Commission, the Party Leadership Group of the Administrative Council, all central bureaus, major military regions, sub-bureaus, large municipal committees, provincial committees, district committees, regional committees, prefectural committees, military regions, corps, armies, and government bodies at or above the level of commissioner’s offices, as well as to leading officials of mass organizations: “Instructions on Rectifying Linguistic Deficiencies in Telegrams, Reports, Directives, and Decisions” Currently, there are indeed quite a few well-written telegrams and other documents circulating within the Party, government, and military.
These communications are clear, concise, vivid, and easy to read, thereby achieving great effectiveness.
At the same time, however, many written materials still contain serious linguistic shortcomings that must be corrected.
The most common of these include excessive use of abbreviations, incomplete sentence structures, unclear explanations, lack of coherence, and unnecessary lengthiness.
The following measures are hereby prescribed for their correction: (1) Prohibit the indiscriminate use of abbreviations.
Many telegrams and documents today excessively employ abbreviated forms for names of individuals, places, dates, organizational titles, and specific terms, requiring readers to exert considerable effort in recalling and inferring meanings, sometimes leaving them utterly confused.
This practice shall be rectified as follows: A. With the exception of certain central leaders widely known to all—such as Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou—and certain officials of the central bureaus and sub-bureaus, as well as the commanders and political commissars of field armies (major military regions)—who may occasionally (but not always or most of the time) be referred to in the closing salutation of a telegram simply by their surnames accompanied by their titles—for example, “Chairman Mao,” “Premier Zhou,” “Chen Rao,” or “Peng Xi”—in general, whether within the body of a document or in its heading and closing salutation, full names must always be used, and surnames alone without given names are prohibited.
Where necessary, titles should also precede the names, such as “Yang Xiufeng, Chairman of the People’s Government of Hebei Province,” “Chen Pixian, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Sunan District,” or “Commander Yang Dezhi and Political Commissar Li Zhimin of the Nineteenth Corps.”
B. Place names must always be written in full; for instance, “Shanghai,” “Fuzhou,” “Guangzhou,” and “Chongqing” should never be abbreviated as “Hu,” “Rong,” “Sui,” “Yu,” or “Fujian” instead of “Min,” nor should “Hunan” be shortened to “Xiang.”
Abbreviations may only be used when two or more well-known cities or provinces are mentioned together in a way that is immediately understandable, such as “Beijing-Tianjin,” “Shanghai-Nanjing,” “Henan-Hubei-Hunan-Jiangxi,” or “the Guangdong-Guangxi border,” or when combined with other words to form popular idiomatic expressions, like “Eastern Shanghai,” “Northern Anhui,” “the Jinpu Railway,” or “the Tianlan Highway.”
C. Ordinary official documents must specify the month and day; urgent communications must indicate the hour as well.
Officially promulgated documents must state the year, month, and day.
All dates and times should be expressed using standard numerals, and the use of the twelve earthly branches [2] and rhyme tables is strictly forbidden.
For example, “February 1st, 14:00” should not be abbreviated as “Chou East Wei.”
Years must be written in full, without any omissions.
For instance, “1951” cannot be shortened to “51.”
D. Organizational names must always be stated in full.
Examples include “the Organization Department and Propaganda Department of the Northeast Bureau,” which should not be abbreviated as “Northeast OrgProp,” “the Air Force Command,” which should not be referred to as “AirCom,” or “the All-China Federation of Trade Unions,” which should not be called “All-China Union.”
E. Except for terms whose abbreviated forms have become universally familiar across the country—for example, “CCP” or “Anti-Imperialism,” which may be used informally—the vast majority of other terms must be written in full.
For instance, “Rent and Interest Reduction” and “Disaster Relief Production” should not be abbreviated as “Double Reduction”; similarly, phrases like “Bandit Spies” or “Spies and Bandits” (referring to spies masquerading as bandits) should not be shortened to “BanditSpies.”
In all formal documents, the use of abbreviations should be minimized as much as possible.
For example, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin should never be referred to as “Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin,” and “US Imperialism” should not be abbreviated as “US Empire.”
F. Any particularly obscure terms whose meanings may not be readily understood by most readers must be accompanied by appropriate explanatory notes. (2) Grammatical rules must be observed.
Although telegram sentences should strive for brevity, they must not violate grammatical principles.
Essential subjects, predicates, and objects must be complete and accurate.
Simple and compound sentences must be clearly distinguished.
Pronouns must directly refer to the nouns they replace.
Adjective and adverb endings should, whenever possible, utilize “de” and “di” to differentiate their functions (adjectives modify nouns—for example, “Imperialism is a dying form of capitalism”—hence the use of “de” before the noun to make this distinction; adverbs primarily modify verbs—for example, “Resolutely overthrow imperialism”—where “di” is used before the verb to highlight this action). Only in this way can clarity and precision be ensured.
As for letters and published documents, not only the text itself but also punctuation must be correct.
To address this issue, the People’s Daily will soon begin serializing a grammar lecture series, urging the entire Party to pay close attention.
Furthermore, it is hoped that among county and county-level government officials, as well as officers at the regimental level and above in the military, at least one person will master grammar to take responsibility for revising the language of official communications. (3) Rectify cases of unclear communication.
A. All documents seeking instructions must clearly state the current situation, one’s own requests and opinions (when forwarding lower-level submissions, one’s own views should also be articulated), and specify which authority or individual is expected to respond to which question by when.
Similarly, all responses must explicitly indicate which authority or individual originally posed which question and by when a reply was requested.
Instructions issued to subordinate units must also be formulated with utmost clarity—for example, specifying which agency is responsible for implementation and by when a report on progress should be submitted.
In short, every matter must be thoroughly accounted for in terms of six “whats”: what happened, who was involved, when it occurred, where it took place, how it unfolded, and why.
Omissions should be permitted only when absolute clarity already exists.
B. To facilitate clear reporting, except for comprehensive reports and directives, the principle of submitting one matter per document must be strictly enforced; combining unrelated issues within a single communication is prohibited, as is using internal Party documents to substitute for external ones.
C. Whether a document is a report, a request for instructions, or a directive, if it needs to inform not only a single individual or organization but also others, the name or title of the primary recipient should be followed by the phrase “and also to,” after which the additional recipients may be listed to clarify responsibilities.
D. When forwarding a document, whether in full or in summary form, the identity of the recipient(s) and the rationale for the forwarding, along with the name of the forwarding party and the date of transmission, must be clearly stated at the beginning of the forwarded material, placing the original document at the end to ensure clarity.
Moreover, the original sender’s and recipient’s names, as well as the date and time, should be retained without abbreviation.
E. When quoting statements made by others in different organs or institutions, the source—namely, who said it and when—must first be identified, followed by the quoted passage enclosed in quotation marks (square brackets). The phrase “and so forth” should then be added.
If the quoted content constitutes a factual account rather than an opinion, the term “and related matters” should be appended.
Finally, one’s own views may be expressed to further clarify the point. (4) Address vagueness in presentation.
Except for very brief communications, all longer documents should get straight to the point by presenting the main idea right from the outset—in essence, by using extremely concise language at the beginning to outline the purpose or conclusion of the entire text (a technique now known in journalism as a “lead,” echoing the ancient Chinese notion of “establishing a succinct statement to capture the essence, thus providing guidance for the entire piece”). This approach draws the reader’s attention and provides an initial overall concept, compelling them to continue reading.
Subsequent explanations can then be offered as needed.
When lengthy documents are divided into sections, each segment should follow the same approach.
Whenever a single document contains multiple layers of meaning or several distinct demands, care must be taken to organize the content logically, clearly delineating each layer and marking paragraphs and items with numerical indicators. (5) Documents must be rigorously condensed.
Leaders at all levels bear heavy responsibilities and are burdened with numerous tasks.
When submitting requests for instructions or reports to superiors, it is crucial to resist two opposing tendencies: the impulse to avoid making proper submissions altogether, as well as the tendency to submit haphazardly without due consideration.
When drafting requests or reports, particular attention should be paid to ensuring that the language is concise, well-organized, and easy to read.
Unfortunately, many existing documents are both overly lengthy and disorganized.
This stems from a failure to condense the text properly, resulting in excessive verbosity or a lack of logical structure, whereby rough drafts are simply passed upward without refinement.
Consequently, such documents often fail to attract the attention of leaders, or even go unread entirely, rendering the effort futile.
Henceforth, all documents submitted to higher authorities for instructions or reports, as well as those issuing directives to subordinates, must be carefully reviewed and revised by their drafters and reviewers with a sense of responsibility, repeatedly streamlining the content and compressing the text before finalization; otherwise, criticism will ensue.
However, compression does not mean arbitrarily omitting essential elements or violating grammatical rules; nor does it imply disregarding the aesthetic quality and vividness of the writing.
Some well-crafted reports, despite their considerable length, remain engaging and do not feel tedious, whereas poorly written reports, even if brief, can be difficult to read.
The key difference lies in whether the text is logically organized, avoids unnecessary verbiage, and adheres to grammatical standards.
All levels of Party committees are urged to earnestly implement these guidelines.
To ensure effective execution of this instruction, relevant officials are requested to print copies of this directive and distribute them to all personnel responsible for drafting and reviewing official documents, conveying its contents at appropriate meetings and publishing it in Party publications.
To guarantee its practical effect, the Central Office and the offices of all central bureaus are tasked with conducting the first inspection of all documents received between January and April 1951, according to the standards outlined herein, by the end of April 1951.
Those units demonstrating exemplary compliance will be publicly commended, while those failing to meet the requirements will be publicly criticized.
Thereafter, inspections will be conducted every four months, totaling three such reviews in 1951, culminating in a comprehensive year-end assessment.
A summary of each inspection must be prepared, approved by the Central Committee, and communicated to all major leading organs throughout the Party.
The Central Committee believes that rectifying these linguistic deficiencies will refine our comrades’ thinking and enhance the efficiency of our work, and therefore attaches great importance to this task, committing to a thorough overhaul of existing problems.
In the process of educating Party members, it is advisable to select several documents broadly conforming to the aforementioned standards as exemplars for collective study, accompanied by explanations, as this constitutes an effective method of education.
Issued by the Central Committee of the CPC on February 1, 1951, based on Mao Zedong’s revised draft.
Four passages from this document have been included in “Selected Works of Mao Zedong on Journalism.”
Note [1]: This instruction was drafted under the direct supervision of Mao Zedong.
The text printed here in Song typeface represents additions and revisions made by Mao himself.
At the time, the instruction was not publicly released but circulated internally among Party committees and affiliated departments.
On February 25, 1951, Mao wrote a letter to Hu Qiaomu, Deputy Minister of Publicity of the CPC Central Committee, regarding the publication of this instruction, stating: “It could be printed as a small booklet and distributed to a wider audience both inside and outside the Party, but there is no need to publish it in the newspapers, as it is not intended for public consumption.
General grammatical education, on the other hand, should be disseminated through articles in the press and textbooks for schools.” [ ] The twelve earthly branches, collectively known as the zodiac signs—namely, Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig—are traditionally used as symbols representing order and sequence; here, they are employed to denote months.