Friday, 3rd September, 2010 by Will
I’m an open-minded kind of guy, I accept that language changes, that people coin neologisms (new words) all the time. I even accept that some of them aren’t the worst words I’ve ever heard. When I saw “organogram”, however, I nearly fell out of my chair.
I first came across it a few weeks ago and, since then, have encountered it twice more. My spellchecker, fortunately, continues to underline it. Maybe it will appear in Word 2012 (along with the apocalypse!). So what is an organogram? Any guesses? It’s nothing like a telegram or anything to do with organs or organic food or even a typo of “oregano gram”. Still have no idea?
It’s an organisation diagram. Obviously. Why people have decided that these two words are much too long is far beyond me and I am unable to see what’s wrong with the much simpler “management structure” or “organisation(al) structure”. I suppose one should be mildly grateful that we don’t have “managrams” or “organotures” but I fear I am tempting fate and will shut up now.
Tags: jargon, management speak, neologisms, Will Blackstock
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Friday, 6th August, 2010 by Will
Diamonds are in the news at the moment, so we thought we’d draw attention to the Company profile of Gem Diamonds. From their website:
“Gem Diamonds is a global diamond company that has been pursuing a long term growth strategy through targeted acquisitions and the development of existing assets. Under current market conditions, the Group is focused on the development of its cash generative assets and has curtailed all non-essential capital and development expenditure.”
The main problem I have here is with the way they use the word “assets”. Like “resources”, it can be incredibly vague. So when they talk about “development of existing assets”, do they mean polishing and cutting diamonds or improving their mining techniques or better training for their staff or something else entirely?
“Cash generative assets” is even worse. Are these liquid assets (i.e. diamonds) or things they can sell to make a lot of money (i.e. diamond mines)? And it needs a hyphen.
It’s much better to be specific, so don’t talk about your “resources” if you mean buildings and, while your staff are very useful to you, don’t describe them as “assets”. It’s weird and dehumanising and, worst of all, can confuse the reader.
Tags: advice, ambiguity, assets, diamonds, grammar, hyphen, jargon, resources, Will Blackstock
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Friday, 2nd July, 2010 by Will
You might think this one is obvious, but you’d be surprised how reluctant some people are to use a dictionary. Don’t expect your spellchecker to tell you the difference between “effect” and “affect” and where and when you should use one or the other. You should never assume you know what an unfamiliar word means, either.
For example, “tabling a motion” in British English means putting something forward (i.e. on the table for the Speaker to see it), whereas if you “table a motion” in American English, you are ruling it out, usually permanently. For this reason, it is probably better to avoid the word “table” used in this sense.
Dictionaries are also useful to ensure that the words you’re using really are words. For instance, we’re having an argument in this very office about the word ”commoditize”, which doesn’t appear in dictionaries, but is now in widespread business use – and on Wikipedia. The Clarity jury is out on this one for the moment. In the meantime, our advice is to avoid any word that doesn’t appear in a dictionary.
If you don’t want to keep a weighty tome on your desk, www.dictionary.com provides all you’ll need along with an excellent thesaurus so you can expand your vocabulary beyond its usual limits.
Tags: advice, dictionary, grammar, jargon, language, mistakes, reading through, thesaurus, Will Blackstock, word use
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Friday, 18th June, 2010 by Max
Heaven only knows what this means. It’s one of the phrases on the Local Government Association’s list of banned words from 2009. Which presumably means that a council, somewhere, has used it.
The 2010 list doesn’t, at first glance, contain anything quite as obscurely fatuous, but does contain some corkers. ‘Webinar’ and ‘wellderly’ are now forbidden, as is ‘goldfish bowl facilitated conversation’. Incidentally, I’d love to know what this last thing is. Perhaps council workers have forsaken the watercooler (surely an Americanism and a cliché in itself) and now catch up on gossip and last night’s TV around the fish tank.
There is a serious point here. The Local Government Association stresses that it is impossible to avoid all jargon in internal communications, but that councils should remove gobbledygook from their public communications. In that context, the guidelines seem sensible, though there are a few on the list that should never have been uttered or committed to print anywhere, by anyone.
Tags: beaconicity, councils, gobbledygook, jargon, Max Leonard, politics, slang, webinar, wellderly
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Thursday, 13th May, 2010 by Susannah
Not Persuasion with a capital P. I’m not suggesting we could outdo Jane Austen, but that headline did lift my spirits. It’s the conclusion of some research into what makes a good website, carried out by marketingexperiments.com and reported by Gerry McGovern in one of his weekly newsletters.
The researchers found that it was more important to be clear than to try too hard to sell whatever it is your website is offering. Specifically, it is vital to answer three questions that users will ask when they visit your website: Where am I?, What can I do here? and Why should I do it?
In other words, your site must be easy to navigate and make clear what people can get from it.
In marketing terms, it means quantifying your value proposition. Don’t say what you offer is “best”, “amazing”, “wonderful”. Tell them how much better it is than its rivals, in what way it is amazing and what it does that makes it wonderful.
People are liable to be turned off by vague hyperbole. By being clear and specific, marketingexperiments.com’s research found, you may greatly increase the effectiveness of your website.
Tags: Gerry McGovern, Jane Austen, marketing, marketingexperiments.com, navigation, Susannah Ross, value proposition, web writing, what makes a good website
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Tuesday, 11th May, 2010 by Clare
[This entry originally appeared on Clare Lynch's blog, goodcopybadcopy]
The one thing you can say about corporate types is that they’re not commitmentphobes.
In fact, it seems that every other company is committed to something – whether it’s quality, excellence, innovation, success or, in the case of PepsiCo, “Performance with a Purpose”.
What’s clever about the “C” word is that it’s a pledge about where you’d like to be, not a statement of where you are. To the delight of your Legal & Compliance team, it has an element of postponement that gets you off the hook from actually being what you claim to be.
Actually, the commitment cliché has become such a staple of the corporate lexicon that I don’t think people really know they’re doing it. I urge you to think twice next time you’re tempted to pledge your to commitment to some spurious corporate value.
Below are my top three offenders – do you recognise your company here?
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Clare Lynch, commitment, diversity, how not to write, words that should be banned
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Thursday, 29th April, 2010 by Richard
One of the few sources of levity in Labour’s General Election campaign has been the mangled metaphors of Peter Mandelson. On Monday (26th April) he told party members that Gordon Brown was “a workhorse at the helm” – an alarming equine captain for the ship of state. Earlier, Mandelson praised Brown’s “granite-like resilience”, although granite is anything but resilient.
In the same communication to party members, he suggested that the Tories had “underlined a key plank” of Labour’s policy. Planks are sometimes underpinned, but it is difficult and usually pointless to underline them. He then suggested that the economy was on a bumpy road to recovery and the Tories would pull the rug from under it – an evident trailer for Labour’s new plan to create jobs by carpeting the M1.
Mandelson’s miscellany is not only a wonderful collection of mixed metaphors, but a vivid illustration of the moribund cliche. “Workhorse” and “helm”, at the end of their long lives, have lost almost all their vital spark as metaphors. But placed next to each other they come back to life and protest against the other’s company.
Tags: cliches, election, mixed metaphors, Peter Mandelson, politics, Richard Heller
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Thursday, 29th April, 2010 by Max
Much talk in the blogosphere recently about a lady, a professional writer, who, touting for business through Google ads, asked potential customers: ‘Need it written badly?’
Unsurprisingly, this attracted a lot of attention. Not a lot of it positive. The line may have been a kind of post-modern joke, but, if so, then it was too subtle for me – which suggests it shouldn’t have been made.
Whether the writer made a bad judgment or simply failed to express herself clearly, the ad contained a mistake. We all make mistakes, there’s no shame in it. However, mistakes can harm your business; a minute’s reflection and a quick read through would have stopped this one being displayed all over the internet.
Thanks to Mic Wright, a journalist, who posted this on his blog. http://brokenbottleboy.tumblr.com/
Tags: advertising, blogs, Max Leonard, Mic Wright, mistakes, reading through
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Thursday, 29th April, 2010 by Will
One of the great plagues of the world of business writing is jargon. I’m sure that most of you will inwardly cringe when reading about people trying to “actualise their goals”. One can, at a push, “realise” a goal, but they’re much better when they are “scored” instead. Jargon is a clumsy form of half-metaphor that intends to make its author seem like they know exactly what they’re writing about but that usually has the opposite effect. Compare the following sentences:
“If we realise the large synergy between our companies, we’ll be able to seriously impact the marketplace and fund new growth throughout the sector.”
“If we merge, we’ll have more customers and make more money.”
The second one may sound a little greedier, but it’s much easier to read and makes more sense.
Tags: advice, jargon, language, Will Blackstock, word use
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Monday, 19th April, 2010 by Clare
[This entry originally appeared on Clare Lynch's blog, goodcopybadcopy]
So I’m thinking I might have to launch a separate blog entirely devoted to “solutions”. Thanks to the reader who forwarded me this hilariously vague job advert, which I hereby add to my ever-growing pile of “solutions” submissions.
Senior Solutions Designer, City of London – London City and West End, London
My client is currently recruiting for a Senior Solutions Designer. This is a senior position in the Solution Design team, working closely with external clients and all internal teams. Key requirements: Key to this role is the ability to quickly understand, analyse and document business and user needs across industries and functions. Applying your experience and attention to detail, you will be required to design innovative user centric solutions to these problems, working closely with internal application development teams in an agile environment. You will be able to demonstrate an in-depth knowledge of Microsoft based Web 2.0, SOA and OLAP technologies in large scale deployments.
The last line makes me think it’s something a bit computery, but I’m still not sure what the person they hope to employ will be expected to do. Are they looking for a chemist? A mathematician? A professional cruciverbalist? What do you think?
Tags: Clare Lynch, effectiveness, job adverts, solutions, words that should be banned
Posted in effectiveness, how not to write | comments (4) »
