To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.

[n 1] Reviewing Plain Words in 1948, The Manchester Guardian quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794: The nonsensical jargon of the old Ministries must be replaced by a simple style, clear and yet concise, free from expressions of servility, from obsequious formulae, stand-offishness, pedantry, or any suggestion that there is an authority superior to that of reason, or of the order established by law.

[5] During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's[n 2] view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence".

"[12][n 4] Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals.

Had Gowers written it as part of his duties while still a civil servant it would have automatically been Crown copyright, but as he had not begun it until after his retirement he owned the rights.

The Times Literary Supplement praised the book and engaged in a little mock-officialese of its own: "It deserves to be a 'best seller' (or perhaps we should say that in all the circumstances it may reasonably be anticipated that it will be found to evoke a relatively considerable demand on the part of the general public).

The Daily Mail, Harold Nicolson and the grammarian G H Vallins objected to the conspicuously un-plain words of Gowers's opening sentences:[19] The purpose of this book is to help officials in their use of written English.

[20]When revising the text in preparation for The Complete Plain Words, Gowers abandoned the joke,[n 5] and rewrote the second sentence as, "I suspect that this project may be received by many of them without any marked enthusiasm or gratitude.

"[22] A substantive objection by Vallins to "the cult of 'plain English'" was his view that verbose phrases lose important nuances when reduced to plain words.

[23] The Treasury invited Gowers to build on the success of Plain Words by producing a second volume of advice on good, clear writing.

[27] The new work consisted of articles, mostly brief, on points of vocabulary, grammar, construction, punctuation and style, set out in alphabetical order, beginning with "Abstract words" and ending with "Write".

The first was that it gave the wrong impression that all the topics were of equal importance; the second was that the people most in need of advice would not think to look up the relevant entry: "There is no reason why anyone addicted to abstract nouns, unconscious of any offence, should ever be prompted to read that article; nor can I think of any other title for it that would be more likely to throw it in his way.

[34] This Gowers did, with help from his colleagues, as before; he made many revisions as a result of "the many correspondents from all parts of the English-speaking world who have been good enough … to send me suggestions, criticisms and specimens".

[35] An example of his revisions is in the entry on "bottleneck", of which in 1951 he had written four brief sentences warning against overuse: in 1954 he felt it necessary to write 270 words, so ubiquitous had the term become.

[33] [n 7] The Times Literary Supplement greeted the publication: "It may be hoped that in this more durable form the book's good influence will continue to spread: Civil Servants have not been alone in profiting from it in the past, nor should they be in the future.

[45] Fraser preserved Gowers's structure, and added three new chapters, the most important of which was titled "Some recent trends"; it covered the increasing prevalence of informality, and the influences of America, science, technology, economics, business, and personnel management.

[46] Fraser noted that though Gowers had said approvingly in 1954 that the use of the subjunctive was dying out, it was now, under the influence of American writing, making an unwelcome reappearance in English usage.

[14] Reviewing the new edition in The Times Literary Supplement, David Hunt commented of Fraser, "his wit, perhaps a little drier and more Scottish, is equally acute, diverting and instructive".

He praised Fraser for replacing Gowers's dated examples of officialese with modern specimens and updating the text to reflect current trends, but concluded: The core of the book remains Gowers, but I do not think Fraser, for all his desire to be faithful, has been able to keep the urbane, untroubled, effortless grace which made the original so instantly attractive.

The Complete Plain Words in any new version cannot possibly have the same impact as Gowers first had when he reminded administrators that they could best express themselves in a clean and economical prose.

The revision was made not by an experienced public servant but by an academic and a lexicographer, Sidney Greenbaum, Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at University College, London and Janet Whitcut, formerly senior research editor of the Longman Dictionary.

[52] An example is in the section on punctuation, where Gowers wrote, "The author of the style-book of the Oxford University Press ... says 'If you take hyphens seriously you will surely go mad'.