discussion 5

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Now that you feel confident about your content, we’ll explore how to write your message as clearly as possible.

STEP 6: WRITE IN PLAIN ENGLISH

“I find it frustrating to be somewhat trapped by a long-standing and robustly implemented ‘institutional writing voice.’ This enforced company style is overly wordy, full of run-on sentence structures and embraces a bureaucratic, impersonal tone that might be ‘legally effective’ but not effective in motivating or communicating with the audience. Ultimately the impersonality of the tone is off- putting to readers and can often be misunderstood as authoritative or even hostile.”

—SURVEY RESPONDENT

Business writing is often mocked for its heavy reliance on jargon and unnecessarily convoluted language. Modern-day corporate-speak comes from a variety of sources outside the business world: from the military, from sports, and from law, among other fields, often driven by the latest trends in management thinking. As businesspeople became more interested in warfare analogies, the habit of using military-style acronyms and specialized vocabulary grew. As businesspeople began to envision themselves as athletes, sports metaphors crept in. And because there’s always been a close connection between business and the law, some of the worst tendencies in business English come from aping legal writing—trying to sound authoritative and official, and muddying the meaning in the process.

The pushback against these tendencies started in the 1970s. The plain English movement arose in response to the ridiculously obscure legalistic writing in government documents. In 1977, New York State passed laws requiring plain English in consumer contracts and leases. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter issued two executive orders mandating that government regulations be easy to understand. There is similar legislation across the English-speaking world.

There are no laws against muddy, convoluted, jargon-ridden business writing, so it’s up to us to fix it on our own. The good news is that you can distinguish yourself by saying what you mean in plain English.

Jargon

There are two kinds of jargon. One is the language specific to your business or industry: acronyms, abbreviations, and specialty vocabulary used as a shortcut among people who understand it:

Will the ASB be ready in time for SteerCo? If not, I suggest we prioritize the alpha of ITB so the team can review it prior to the launch of ELF.

Almost everyone who has a job has written this way at one time or another, and most of the time it’s perfectly fine. Sometimes, though, it’s not. When you use heavy jargon outside your immediate work circle—among people who don’t understand it—it can create a barrier to understanding. It can be a particular problem in proposals, where it can confuse, annoy, and alienate readers.

The other kind of jargon is that common group of business buzzwords and clichés that many of us desperately overuse (moving the needle, circling back, drilling down, and so forth). Using this kind of jargon excessively, even when your audience will understand it, can flatten your writing and diminish its impact. Relying too much on jargon can make you sound sloppy, as if you’re not willing to do the work to express what you mean accurately.

How many of the phrases below do you see in a typical workweek?

Actionable Aligning At the end of the day Bandwidth Best practice Blue-sky thinking

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