The only business writing book you’ll ever need - Laura Brown, Rich Karlgaard 2019
Step 6: Write in plain english
The seven steps
“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
Boiling the ocean
Boots on the ground
Deep dive
Delta (instead of “change”)
Disruptive
Game changer
Going forward
Hard-baked solution
Impactful
Iterate
Leading-edge
Leverage
Low-hanging fruit
Moving the ball forward
No-regrets move
Popping the bubble
Quick win
Reaching out
Reality check
Strategic
Synergy
Taking the pulse
Thought shower
Tools
Touching base
2.0
Upskill
Value add
Warning shot
I’m sure you could add to the list. Such phrases are often metaphors, as you can see, and taken in bulk they’re just comical. Things really get interesting when writers begin to mix these metaphors; the result is often pure nonsense:
Have you noticed that the farther you move toward fulfilling your potential, the higher the needle moves forward?
Wait, which way is the needle moving? Up or forward? It’s a silly example, but it came from a real document, and it illustrates what happens when people rely on these expressions too much: they stop thinking. Consider how distinctive and refreshing your voice as a writer could be if you cut down on your use of this kind of jargon.
Instead of
Going forward, we should drill down into actionable initiatives rather than blue-sky thinking.
Try
In the future, we should focus on initiatives that we can actually implement rather than unproven ideas.
Instead of
At the end of the day, we can advance by targeting quick wins and low-hanging fruit in the market.
Try
Ultimately, we’ll succeed if we focus on easily achievable goals.
You’ll note that both of these examples do more than eliminate offending phrases. The revisions are more specific and easier to understand than the originals. They present concrete ideas that can be discussed and perhaps disagreed with. Do we really want to stick with what we already know how to do, without exploring other avenues? Is focusing on easy goals really the right thing to do now? When you strip these suggestions of their jargon, it becomes much easier to understand and discuss them.
Needlessly Complicated Language
In Step 4, Be concise, we looked at the bad habit of using long phrases where short ones would do. In that step, we were concerned about saving space and writing economically. Here we’re concerned with a different issue: how using language that’s needlessly complicated can instead impinge on your ability to communicate.
What do I mean by “needlessly complicated” language? Here are some examples:
Utilize = use
Initiate = start
Subsequent to = after
Prior to = before
In light of the fact that = because or since
In the event that = if
In close proximity = near
In the near future = soon
With reference to = about
With regard to = about
Regarding = about
At this time = now
At this point in time = now
By means of = by
In accordance with = under, by
In order to = to
In the absence of = without
In cases when = when
The basic pattern here is taking a small, simple word and replacing it with a bigger word or a series of words. Just as with jargon, the impulse behind this kind of writing seems to be that it will make you look smarter or more serious or more professional. Why merely begin something when you can initiate it? Why use a thing when you can utilize it?
You’ll notice that a lot of these forms are prepositional phrases, which we discussed in Step 4, Be concise. Learning to recognize them is a useful tool in improving your writing skills.
This kind of deliberate complication is everywhere in business. It has seeped into customer service training. Cashiers in some stores have stopped calling for the “next” customer and started saying “following” instead, as if adding those syllables demonstrates superior customer service.
Of course, stores are not fooling customers about the quality of their service simply by having associates say “following” rather than “next.” By the same token, you’re not fooling anyone when you use needlessly complicated language in your writing. In fact, you’ll impress people more if your writing is straightforward and clear. Let’s look at some examples:
Instead of
In the absence of relevant performance data, we are unable to make an appropriate recommendation for an alternative software solution.
Try
Without performance data, we cannot recommend alternative software.
Instead of
In the event that you encounter a program error, utilize the indicated button on your screen to restart the program.
Try
If the program crashes, click the Restart button.
Instead of
At this point in time, we lack sufficient desk and seating arrangements to accommodate a full complement of staff in the office on a daily basis.
Try
Right now, we don’t have enough desks for everyone to come into the office every day.
But Everybody Writes This Way
You might be wondering what the big deal is. Lots of people write this way—business writing just sounds like this. If everyone writes this way, then everyone will understand you, right? So what’s the problem?
There are two problems, in fact. The first is that not everyone will understand you. It’s possible to get your head so deeply into jargon and convoluted language that you’re actually hard to understand. Look at this sentence, for example:
A strong risk identification process casts a broad net that captures all key risks and then drills down within the major risks to understand root causes.
What?
Unless you’re a risk consultant, you have to squint at this sentence pretty hard to understand what it’s trying to say, which is this:
A strong risk identification process helps you understand the key risks and their causes.
This “translation” might be too informal, but it captures the meaning of the original in much clearer terms.
The second problem with this kind of writing is that it can make you look bad. Ironically, most people start writing this way to sound smart. Then it takes over their brains. I’ve always felt that this habit made people look dumber, not smarter. It turns out I’m not the only one who feels this way, and there’s research to support this conclusion. Carnegie Mellon psychologist Daniel Oppenheimer, in a paper called “Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly,” found that writers who use long words unnecessarily are perceived by readers as less intelligent than those who use simpler vocabulary.‡ In accepting the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize for Literature, Professor Oppenheimer explained, “It’s important to point out that this research is not about problems with using long words but about using long words needlessly.” He concluded: “One thing seems certain: write as simply and plainly as possible and it’s more likely you’ll be thought of as intelligent.”§
Furthermore, I suspect that writing this way does more than make you sound dumb. I think it makes you dumber. I don’t have any research to support this idea, but it seems to me that if you have a limited vocabulary, your thinking will be limited. If you have only a small set of ideas that your brain defaults to, can you really be “thinking outside the box”? I suppose it might happen the same way that relying on a GPS can short-circuit your sense of direction and prevent you from using your natural navigation skills. By accepting the challenge to write clearly, you’ll challenge yourself to do better thinking.
When everyone else communicates this way, it’s natural that you may want to fit in. Of course, there’s vocabulary in any line of business, but there’s also a voice, and we unconsciously adopt that voice. There’s nothing wrong with fitting in; what’s wrong is the “unconscious” part. So you fit in, and then eventually you sound like everyone else. But once you have some confidence, you might find the courage to start sounding like yourself. You will stand out in the organization if you have a distinctive and clear voice. It will be an asset to you. People will see that your writing is clear and figure that your thinking must be clear, too. You don’t have to write in businessese to sound smart. You’ll sound even smarter if you can get rid of the jargon and the inflated language and write in a clear and direct voice.
Your Favorite Buzzwords
Everyone has favorite things: foods, clothing, movies . . . and language. You might find that you have particular buzzwords you use over and over again. I had a client once who couldn’t get through the morning without calling something “foundational.” He seemed to be completely unaware of how frequently he was leaning on the word.
What’s the harm? For one thing, people notice it when you overuse buzzwords, and they will notice if there’s one you tend to use repeatedly. For another thing, relying too much on one word can shape the way you think. A shortcut in communication can reflect a shortcut in thinking. When you default to repeating certain words, your vocabulary shrinks, and so does the way you perceive the world. Was everything my client noted really “foundational”? Sometimes he used the word to mean “seminal” (which is close to its actual meaning), sometimes to mean “original,” and sometimes to mean “important.” His overuse of the word had blurred the distinctions among the different meanings he ascribed to it, and his thinking, in this area at least, had become a little sloppy.
Is there a word you overuse? It’s worthwhile noticing if you’ve developed an unconscious habit of depending too much on the same word. Breaking the habit can help you break into more specific and creative thinking patterns.
How to Write in Plain English
Breaking the habit of writing in businessese can be difficult. If you’re a planner and like to outline your messages and documents before you start writing, you can use a trick that will make it easy for you to draft in plain English right from the start: explain the concept to your grandmother. This trick is very helpful in overcoming writer’s block (see here), and it’s also helpful when you want to express yourself in clear language. Your grandmother probably doesn’t know what moving the needle means, and she’ll probably laugh at you if you say you’re going to initiate something rather than start it. Use your grandmother as a model audience to figure out how to say what you mean directly and without jargon.
If you’re an editor and like to revise your drafts, you can also enlist the help of your grandmother. As you read what you’ve written, imagine that she’s sitting next to you. Is there junk in your draft that would make her raise her eyebrows or shake her head? Get rid of it, and replace it with plain English.
Obviously you don’t have to use your grandmother as this model reader—she’s just a good example of someone who’s probably intelligent and not overly impressed with fancy language. She’s sympathetic to you and cares what you have to say, but she wants to understand it. You can choose any model reader you like—anyone who will help you get a different perspective on your writing, so that you can write more clearly.
Beware of Revision Fatigue
Every time you revise, you create the potential for new errors, and revising onscreen can increase this risk. Especially if you’re working in a rush, it’s easy to leave careless errors in your document. These are often the product of partial revisions:
I will be in the London next week.
This writer initially wrote, “I will be in the U.K. next week,” then decided to be more specific and say “London” instead. But she forgot to remove “the,” and so ended up with this weird hybrid form.
Using tracked changes creates another risk: you might have a document so full of changes that you literally can’t see what the final version will look like through all the strikethroughs and different colors of additions. So when you accept changes, you might inadvertently end up with something like this:
Tom Stevens and Karen Washington will lead consolidation efforts in the Midwest and regional strategy leadership and provide leadership in strategy in the region.
With tracked changes showing, that revision looked fine, but with the changes accepted, it’s clear that the actual editing wasn’t quite finished.
Revision—especially when you go through many iterations—can cause fatigue and lead to errors. No matter how sick and tired your intensive work on the project has made you feel, be sure to go through your draft one last time before you finalize it to catch all the weird little errors that might have crept in. If you’ve been through so many revisions that you feel you can’t “see” the document anymore, ask a colleague to take a quick pass through and clean up any clutter left behind.
SUMMARY: Write in Plain English
Your writing will be clearer, easier to understand, and more effective if you write in plain English.
Avoid excessive use of jargon, and avoid needlessly complicated language.
To write in plainer English, imagine that you’re writing for your grandmother or some other model reader outside the world of business. Express yourself clearly in a way that this model reader would understand.