Editing Plain language (section)

===Early history===
[[Cicero]] argued, "When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind."{{Citation needed|date=September 2013}}

Shakespeare parodied the pretentious style, as in the speeches of Dogberry in ''[[Much Ado About Nothing]]''. 
The plain, or native style, was, in fact, an entire literary tradition during the English Renaissance, from [[John Skelton (poet)|John Skelton]] through [[Ben Jonson]] and include such poets as [[Barnabe Googe]], [[George Gascoigne]], [[Walter Raleigh]], and perhaps the later work of [[Fulke Greville]]. In addition to its purely linguistic plainness, the Plain Style employed an emphatic, pre-Petrarchan [[Prosody (linguistics)|prosody]] (each syllable either clearly stressed or clearly unstressed).