Are they really sure about this excellence thing?

This ad copy for a supporter of the Sydney Writers’ Festival provokes some thought. Aside from thought-provoking requiring a hyphen, the first sentence contains what is known as a faulty parallelism. How can “K&L Gates understands” follow on logically from “Like writing”?  Some editing and re-writing is very much needed here. Is there a writer in the house?

 

Jargon: we’re all on a journey to gobbledegook

Government officials in the UK have been issued with an online style guide that bans more than 30 pieces of jargon. They now have to find more prosaic ways to say

• deliver (pizzas are delivered, not results)
• drive (overly dramatic, when the word manage would work just as well)
• key (how about important?) 
• empowered (now overused to the point of being meaningless)
• facilitate (many simpler words will work as well).

Jargon has a way of wiggling its way into everyday workplace language, er, I mean, discourse. Some of the latest I’ve heard of are

• socialise, as in ‘Have you socialised this?’, meaning ‘Have you told others about it?’
• organograms – for an organisational chart
• journey – apparently, we’re all on a journey, somewhere….

Its or it’s?

 Uh oh.  This sign on a van shows just how confused people are about the use of it’s and its.

Here’s the answer: if you can substitute it is or it has, use it’s  (with an apostrophe). At all other times, use its (no apostrophe). Easy! Now someone tell the people who make signs.

Don’t Suck at PowerPoint

  Jesse Desjardins has created an engaging presentation about the perils of Powerpoint. His advice? 

 Use great design. Avoid cheesy graphics and fonts. Keep to one style. Use minimal text.

A great reminder for all of us who dabble in the black arts of slide presentations.

Ban apostrophes?

So befuddled by apostrophes are the councilors in a part of Devon, UK, that they are thinking about banning the pesky little punctuation marks from street signs altogether. (An example of their confusion shown.)

It’s (apostrophe required) provoked howls of condemnation across the UK. The Plain English Campaign’s Steve Jenner commented: “It’s nonsense. Where’s it going to stop? Are we going to declare war on commas, outlaw full stops?”

“If it’s to try to make things clearer, it’s not going to work. The whole purpose of punctuation is to make language easier to understand. Is it because someone at the council doesn’t understand how it works?”

I should add, however, that apostrophes have not been used in Australian place names since 1966. So it’s Frenchs Forest and Kings Cross.

Note: the sign should read Children’s Garden.

Business Cliches

 

Cliche’s alienate your audience. Avoid them if you can. Here are some that have appeared on the horizon lately.

Award-winning. Not so impressive if it brings to mind a koala stamp from elementary school. If it’s an important award, then it might impress. Otherwise, not so much.

Cutting-edge: Again, a bit of puffery that won’t impress today’s jaded audience. Cutting-edge belongs with State of the Art and Knock Your Socks Off – way back in 1985.

Data-driven: OK, so you use facts on which to base your ideas.

World-class: Seems like everything is world-class these days. Ho hum.

Just when we thought we’d left win-win, paradigm, and synergy behind somewhere in the 90s. Seems like clichés are irresistible.

Words that we’re all tired of

   Lake Superior State University  have released their 38th annual list of words and phrases they’d like to banish.  Right at the top comes  fiscal cliff.  One writer apparently is equally troubled by the River of Debt and the Mountain of Despair.

They also cite kick the can down the road, trending, and passionate.  Bucket list is there, too. As one contributor observed “Getting this word on the Banished Word List is on my bucket list!”.

Meaningless jargon

Here’s an extract of a public notice from Wollondilly Shire Council.

The strategy allows for a cyclic maintenance / capital work programme maximising the resource commitment to the applicable line closure while at the same time minimising the frequency of the possession.

I think they’re trying to say something about rail line closures for maintenance work, but it’s written in such gobbledegook, it’s hard to tell.

Tips for writing in Plain English

As part of its launch of Windows 8, Microsoft has completely overhauled the license agreements it offers customers. Instead of lengthy documents written in dense legalese, the new end-user license agreements are written in simple easy-to-understand language.

Here are some tips for writing in Plain English:

• Put the needs of your readers first. What questions do they need answered? What’s most important for them?
• Put the main message first. The topic sentence containing the main idea should come at the beginning of a paragraph.  
• Write to express, not to impress. Use familiar words that your readers can relate to.
• Keep sentences to 12-20 words. Vary sentence length.
• Edit carefully for unnecessary words and phrases.
• Make the design and layout reader-friendly. Use straightforward familiar fonts. Use headings to guide the reader.