Clear cut English: Law student Victoria McFarlane.

There's little to beat plain English, or so Sir Chips Keswick of Hambros Bank Limited believes.

Sir Chips is the sponsor of an annual prize, the Keswick Prize for Lucidity, which encourages students to use lucid, jargon-free prose when writing about technical subjects.

The 2004 winner is law student (private law) Victoria McFarlane, who collects a cheque for R5 000. McFarlane's essay was titled The Idea/Expression Dichotomy - Copyright in Literary Characters. Previous winners have included students from zoology, drama and linguistics.