Here are his six rules from the end of the article:
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never us a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
The Plain English community is big on these rules and they're at the heart of the style checker I built for After the Deadline.
I flag passive voice (4), complex words (2), cliches (1), redundant expressions (3), some jargon phrases (5), and I use a statistical model to eliminate suggestions that make no sense (6).
