Distorted or misleading information - Technical communication ethics

Practical models for technical communication - Shannon Kelley 2021

Distorted or misleading information
Technical communication ethics

In technical communication, visuals are another area where unethical choices can lead to distorted or misleading information. Game designers Leticia and Jason, who you will meet again in later chapters, created this chart to make it appear as though their video game, Alpacas of Doom!, greatly reduced the number of alpaca attacks in the U.S. in the months following its release (figure 2.3). At a glance, you can see the line drastically drop immediately after Alpacas of Doom! hits store shelves

Look again. What does the chart really say? Leticia and Jason jokingly want the user to believe we are finally safe from vicious alpaca attacks, but they know the data says otherwise. Graphs typically arrange numbers from smaller to larger, so unless someone is reading closely, they might conclude that alpaca attacks decreased after the release of the game. In reality, the number of attacks increased. This visual information takes advantage of the user’s expectation for how a graph is supposed to work.

Misrepresenting information is no joke. At best, it will annoy your audience and leave too much interpretation in the hands of the user. At worst, misrepresentation or distortion will lead to faulty decision-making and could result in litigation, injury, or worse.

Take a moment to think about how distorted or misleading information happens. Sometimes miscommunication results from not fully understanding the material. Maybe the writer wants to spare someone’s feelings or wants to avoid blame or negative consequences by leaving out details or exaggerating results. A combination of laziness, distraction, lack of experience, competing interests, or any number of human flaws could lead someone to mislead their audience.

Whether or not miscommunication is intentional, misleading or distorted information can lead to serious problems. As a professional, you must set high standards for your work. In this section, we show types of distorted and confusing language so you can recognize these instances and avoid them in your writing. We also provide tips on how to make it right, so you can create technical documents that are accurate, effective, and ethical.

Figure 2.3. Example of Misleading Graph. The graph’s design invites a misreading of the data by inverting the numbers on the vertical axis (“Numbers of Attacks”) from larger to smaller, rather than the typical arrangement of smaller to larger.

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Ambiguity

Ambiguity is when you present multiple meanings at once. Often, ambiguous writing is unintentional. However, intentional ambiguity weakens the effectiveness of technical communication and should be avoided. Intentional ambiguity, or obfuscation, is unethical because the communicator deliberately seeks to mislead readers.

Consider the following statement: “An employee has filed at least one complaint about a supervisor every month for the past year.” This statement is ambiguous because it could be understood as multiple employees have filed complaints about a supervisor or one employee has filed complaints about several supervisors. Each scenario differs significantly. Depending on circumstances, complaints from a single employee might be evaluated differently than complaints from multiple employees.

Avoiding ambiguity isn’t hard if you determine what’s important about the message you’re sending. In technical communication, you always lead with important information and follow with relevant additional details. Whether starting a paragraph or writing a sentence, the same principle is true.

Let’s say the statement refers to one employee filing complaints against a supervisor and the audience is internal, meaning that no one outside the company will read the report. There is no reason to leave out names in this instance: “Michael Herrera has filed at least one complaint about his supervisor, Dana Samson, every month for the past year.” This message becomes important (and damning) evidence about the professional relationship between two people along with a severe failure by the company to deal with the situation.

Relevant information that follows this opening sentence should include details about the nature of the complaints and an explanation of why this issue has continued for a year without being addressed.

Remember that ambiguity is avoided by leading with important information, using active sentences, and making sure your intentions are clear. The next two sections provide examples of specific kinds of ambiguity you might encounter in technical communication.

Euphemism

Euphemisms are words that replace other words to soften the impact of the real definition. Many euphemisms in the English language cluster around taboo subjects, such as death, sex, and bodily functions. For instance, rather than say that someone died, you might say one of the following:

” Harold passed away.

” Fido is in a better place now.

These euphemisms for death attempt to make it sound less frightening. Using more “polite” language to smooth social interactions when dealing with difficult concepts is the most commonly accepted use of euphemism. It provides distance and lessens the blow. Unfortunately, euphemisms can create distance that allows for, or even encourages, irresponsibility. Think about how many ways you can fire employees without taking responsibility:

” The department was downsized.

” Departmental reallocation of resources requires externalizing personnel proportionally.

Bad actors use euphemisms to hide reality, create a legal interpretive space, or make room for active denial later, as these following examples show:

” Enhanced interrogation techniques (torture)

” Collateral damage (civilian death, injury, or property damage during military action)

” Ethnic cleansing (genocide)

In a stand-up routine about euphemism, comedian George Carlin quips: “The more syllables a euphemism has, the further divorced from reality it is.” You can use his one-liner to determine when you are writing euphemistically. Is the sentence filling up with syllables? Are your sentences active or passive? Do others know what you mean?

Fix the problems created by euphemism by having an honest conversation with yourself. If you are trying to soften language by using euphemism, explore your intentions. Will the user benefit from this language, or is the benefit only on your end? If the latter, the choice is probably not ethical.

For example, let’s look at this 2018 statement from General Motors (GM): “Market conditions require that five North American assembly and propulsion plants will be unallocated product by the end of 2019.” This is confusing language that is wide open to a variety of interpretation. An honest, clearer message would read, “Due to the popularity of SUV crossovers, production plants that aren’t equipped to build these vehicles will close by the end of 2019.”

Bruce Barry, a professor at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University, suggests GM used “euphemistic language in order to potentially avoid their responsibilities under either the law or their collective bargaining agreements.” The word “unallocated” doesn’t mean “shut down” or “close,” which may save GM from paying severance or offering new jobs and training to their fired workers.2

Circumlocution

Circumlocution is the act of burying the message in an overabundance of words. This can happen at the sentence or paragraph level, when the writer overstuffs their document with useless words that tire readers or with language that circles the subject without landing. This tactic can also indicate the communicator has limited understanding of the subject but is trying to appear knowledgeable by increasing word count.

Politicians are well practiced in the use of excessive detail. Here’s an example of a politician’s response when asked about federal aid for education quoted in the book Fallacies Arising from Ambiguity by Douglas Walton:

I firmly believe that every citizen is entitled to the best possible education. In fact, it is my unalterable conviction that it is the solemn obligation of each generation to endow its youth with the knowledge of the noble achievements of the human species and to make these endowments equally without regard to race, creed, sex, color, or region. I also hold that the burden of providing these rights and privileges should be equitably allotted among those most capable of assuming the burden.3

Notice how the speaker avoids committing to an actual answer. Instead, he pumps his audience full of feel-good words that obfuscate the unpopular part of the policy. Try reading this out loud and you’ll really hear it. This tactic is effective because the politician not only distracts his audience from the question, but he also gets them nodding along. Let’s look at the same passage edited for clarity:

I believe every citizen is equally entitled to the same high-quality education; it’s the responsibility of the present generation to provide this education to the future generations; and we should pay a percentage of tax dollars into education according to our overall wealth.

While arguably not as pretty, the message is clearer: everyone gets the same quality education and wealthier people put more money into the fund that makes equal education possible.

Exclusive Language

Presenting information ethically means considering differences in culture and whether the language in the document is discriminatory. Discriminatory language is often subtle and based on the communicator’s assumptions, such as assuming the audience is male or that everyone in the audience is able-bodied. You can easily replace fireman with firefighter. You can also replace words like “walk forward” with “move forward.”

In addition to ethical considerations, discriminatory language in technical documents can have serious legal consequences. Responsible technical communicators need to present information in a way that will be understood by a wide range of users, regardless of their background. This means checking documents for language that could be confusing or offensive to readers and using design that accounts for the possibility of visual impairment.

Offensive References

Most cultures find specific words and gestures offensive depending on how they are delivered. In the U.S., the middle finger is typically hostile. In other cultures, giving a thumbs-up is viewed as offensive, which might come as a surprise to people living in the U.S. who associate the thumbs-up with a job well done or an indication that you’re ready to proceed. This cultural difference could be pertinent to a technical document.

Graphics and photos in documents that are created in the U.S. sometimes feature a thumbs-up as a means of communicating approval or success. Clearly, “success” isn’t how this image would be interpreted by a user from one of the cultures that view the thumbs-up as a rude gesture. For similar reasons, a company based in India won’t use a swastika in images meant for an international audience, even though the symbol has religious meaning in Eurasian cultures. They know the symbol is firmly connected with Nazism in Europe and the U.S.—there’s no severing that connection.

The meaning of symbols, language, or gestures can change over time. Words that may have had a negative connotation like “sick” (meaning ill) can change to describe something that is cool or amazing. Language evolves so fast, in fact, that by the time this textbook goes to print, the previous example will be out of date.

Technical communicators must be careful to review their content and ensure that it is suitable for users regardless of their cultural background. This requires research, awareness, and responsibility. Some of the work involves self-awareness—often our more casually offensive language is a product of bias or ignorance. For example, assuming only men are part of the audience when women are an estimated 51 percent of the U.S. population or presenting materials that make certain minorities look unsavory or undesirable is not only unethical, it shows poor taste and separation from reality. Those are three traits that don’t work well in technical communication fields.

Fix offensive references by researching international cultures for differences from your own culture, reviewing demographic realities, and identifying the biases that may interfere with effective communication. Do a quick internet search using search terms like “business etiquette in (insert country).”

Idioms

Idioms are phrases that have specific cultural meaning and that can’t be understood simply by translating the individual words in the phrase. “Learn the ropes” is an example of an idiom. Unless someone has encountered this idiom before, they might not understand that “learning the ropes” means to develop basic skills in an area.

Idioms are particular to a language but also regionally diverse. “Knock on wood” doesn’t make sense to English speakers outside the U.S. as a wish for good luck because they’re more likely to “touch wood.” This is the kind of phrase that you might add without realizing that some users won’t understand it.

Fixing idioms isn’t rocket science. In fact, it’s a piece of cake. The shortcuts we use in casual conversation don’t always translate well, especially in situations that require precision. Let’s try that again: fixing idioms isn’t complicated. In fact, it’s an easy task.

Jargon

Jargon is specialized language used by people within a field to communicate concepts anyone in the same profession will understand. For example, consider how two surgeons discuss a procedure with one another. They use specific medical terms to impart important information quickly so the patient survives. If you think about your own professional experiences, you have probably used jargon to communicate with your coworkers—either a shortcut word that everyone at work understands, or a term that only applies to that specific workplace.

Right now, you are learning vocabulary words in your classrooms that are the jargon you’re expected to know and understand in your post-college profession. Jargon becomes problematic when technical communicators either forget that a general audience is unfamiliar with the term or use the unknown term against the audience.

When jargon is intentionally used with an audience who won’t understand it, without providing clear definitions, the author’s motive is questionable at best. Be on the lookout for words designed to halt understanding. A writer who doesn’t want the audience to understand is up to no good.

There are many reasons writers might be intentionally unclear: to hide a lack of information, to disguise or downplay the actual situation, to speak directly to people in the know and keep everyone else in the dark, or to persuade the user to do something they want. If you’ve ever felt pressured into signing a contract you couldn’t understand, you have experienced the power of jargon.

On the other hand, many writers are accidentally unclear. Every writer does this, especially in early drafts. Maybe you rushed and didn’t review what you’d written. Maybe you thought you were clear but couldn’t see the writing from the user’s perspective. This is not an ethical problem. It’s more an issue of taking your time, reading through your work, and getting second opinions. Still, the outcome is identical to intentional obfuscation: lack of clarity halts understanding and thus action, which is never the goal of ethical technical communicators.