Remove the Jargon from Your Writing
Cut the Bull!
Long winded, impenetrable, meaningless jargon? How much gobbledegook does your organisation publish on its web site or send to customers? At the City of Edinburgh Council they have been taking steps to ensure that their report writers know how to communicate, effectively. Anthony Landale reports.
How often have you read reports, policies or documents which, however hard you try, simply fail to make sense? You aren’t alone; indeed there is even an annual award for the most baffling of these texts - The Golden Bull Award - and, as you will see in panel 1, this year’s winner is an absolute peach.
But however entertaining it may be to poke fun at this corporate gobbledegook, there is real problem here. Just consider the fact that only 10-15% of what you and your team put in your proposals, reports, letters, emails and brochures ever gets read. Why? Well don’t blame the reader. Who, for example, would want to read this twaddle from an NHS Trust - ‘Where the combined value of the above payments before actual assimilation remains greater than the combined value of the payments after assimilation, the former level of pay will be protected. These protection arrangements apply to the combined value of payments before and after assimilation, not to individual pay components, excepting the provision relating to retention of existing on-call arrangements.’
…only 10-15% of what you and your team put in your proposals, reports, letters, emails and brochures ever gets read…
It’s bewildering isn’t it. However, the real irony is that the people writing this sort of nonsense are trying very hard to communicate effectively. OK, they are failing miserably, but the answer is not for them to stop trying. Rather, the solution is for them to learn key skills that can transform this rubbish into clear, persuasive and engaging writing.
Some organisations, of course, recognise the negative impact that poor or impenetrable writing has on those people who have to read it and have started to take steps to address this situation. The City of Edinburgh Council is one such example, as senior consultant at the Council, Pat Angus, explained. “We write and publish reports, plans and policies all the time, and increasingly these are available on our web site, so it is important for the public who want to access them that they are clear and easy to understand.
It is interesting to note that Pat Angus went through a rigorous process to find a supplier who could help the Council. The organisation already had two existing writing courses available to managers but she wanted something that significantly raised their game and decided that they needed extra help from a specialist consultancy.
But how can you differentiate between one expert supplier and another? Pat Angus’ approach was to give each of the training companies she approached some rather leaden Council text which she then asked them to improve - and after a hard evaluation process she decided to pilot a course from the accelerated learning specialists, Illumine, who are UK franchisees for the international, award winning programme, Writing Dynamics™.
…planning is key both because it helps the writer to gather all their ideas and information and because it helps stimulate creative thinking…
The Writing Dynamics™ course starts from the premise that all writing is about persuasion. First you have to entice the reader to read your document. Then you want the reader to understand your key messages. And finally you want your reader to respond in the desired way. The three essential processes that help you to achieve these goals can be summarised as follows.
1. Planning. It is no surprise to find that good planning is a must. However it may surprise you to hear that professional writers spend more than twice the amount of time in planning compared to non-professional writers. Now let me be clear about this. Planning is key both because it helps the writer to gather all their ideas and information and because it helps stimulate creative thinking.
In this context there are a number of powerful planning techniques which you can use. Mind Mapping is one and you can find out more about how to use this planning tool on www.mind-mapping.com Another is the Cluster technique which, like Mind Mapping, allows you to put down on one page all the various associated thoughts that you have around your subject. Both these techniques also help you to consider your audience. How much do they know about the subject? How much detail do they need? What style of writing is appropriate? Start answering these questions and you will have a much better chance of composing a piece that is appropriate and engaging.
2. The quick draft. Of course once you have constructed a plan it is far easier to draft your document. You know where you are starting, you know where you are going and you have some key milestones for your journey. However, when drafting, a good piece of advice is this … do not revise as you go along and once you have started writing don’t stop - keep going. If you make an error then leave it. If you can’t think of a word or phrase then leave a space to fill in later. Remember that nothing comes out perfectly the first time so instead of perfection aim for a draft that contains everything you want to say.
…Every writer gets good ideas…
Furthermore if you are one of those people who find that they can’t get started then begin anywhere. It doesn’t matter where you start so long as it is all included at the end. And one final hint with rough drafting; keep a notepad to hand. Every writer gets good ideas when drafting; ideas that don’t belong to the sentence or paragraph under construction. Note them as they occur and keep them for later use.
3. Editing. Once you have drafted your piece you are ready for the most important step of all - editing. 
And invariably this means cutting down on your text, not adding to it. You may think that you have 1000 wonderful things to say but the effectiveness of your communication is measured not by what you know but by what your reader takes in and understands. Editors know this and that is why they are so ruthless with their red pen! Here are three areas to which you should pay particular attention.
i. Are you managing your readers’ attention? If your sentences are too long or too complex then break them down. Shorter sentences will help you to be clear and concise and make it easier for readers to follow what you are saying. Additionally, add variety. If the first sentence in every paragraph you have written starts with the same word e.g. ‘I ‘or ‘The’ then your readers’ attention will start to waver. Vary the length of your paragraphs and vary the words you start with.
ii. Create movement with more active writing. Most passive sentences contain some form of the verb ‘to be’. So if you want to develop a more active style of writing then look out for these words … am, is, was, were, be, being, been. Once you have spotted that you are using the passive voice then change it. Put the ‘doer’ before the verb and the ‘doee’ after the verb. So ‘The director wrote the report’ is active while ‘The report was written by the director’ is passive.
iii. Create more energy by finding the action. Replacing long nouns with verbs will enliven your writing still further. Here is an example. ‘We would appreciate your signature on the contract’. This is terribly slow compared to ‘Please sign the contract’. Similarly ‘We’d like your clarification of the matter’ can be replaced by the faster ‘Please clarify the matter’. So your challenge is to spot problem nouns and be more direct.
At The City of Edinburgh Council training like this, which delivers powerful techniques which people can apply, immediately, to their work is pure gold. The Council aims to be one of the best in the country and to meet its targets it needs to be in constant communication with its community about all the services it provides. In this respect Council managers who write hundreds of reports on everything from education and the environment to social work and transport need to be excellent communicators. Writing well isn’t just a part of their job - it is a critical competency.
Said Pat Angus: “I went through the training myself and got something from every part of it. It was only when I started to pay close attention that I recognised how much ‘Council speak’ I was using and I suspect that is the same for all of us. So I started to work on having a clearer writing style, I now take more time planning how to get my message across and I’ve learned to cut out some of the padding I was using.”
Other managers have been impressed with the course too. The anecdotal evidence suggests that it has taught people a process which eliminates the mystery around effective writing by giving people a clear system to follow. More than that, managers are finding that they are able to transfer what they have learned to their report writing without feeling restricted. Indeed the feedback suggests a certain amount of structure gives managers more confidence in their writing approach.
The acid test, however, will come a few months down the line when all the report writing Council managers have undertaken the training and their latest reports have filtered through the system. “I know that the managers who have taken this training believe that they have made a big improvement but will our Councillors and our community notice a significant difference?,” asked Pat Angus. “I will be asking for feedback and I expect them to find that the writing is sharper and clearer.”
So the final question is this. Do people in your business or organisation need to improve their writing? As a writer myself I was surprised that a two day course had such an impact - but the truth is that it does. No bull.
Golden Bull Award Winner
Australian Taxations Office for its Goods and Services legislation.
‘For the purpose of making a declaration under this Subdivision, the Commissioner may:
- treat a particular event that actually happened as not having happened; and
- treat a particular event that did not actually happen as having happened and, if appropriate, treat the event as:
i. having happened at a particular time
ii. having involved particular action by a particular entity - treat a particular event that actually happened as:
i. having happened at a time different from the time it actually happened
ii. having involved particular action by a particular entity (whether or not the event actually involved any action by that entity)’
More bull
The following pieces of writing have all been awarded the Golden Bull by The Campaign for Plain English over the past few years
Trilogy Telecom (for an e-mail to a customer)
BT have started processing the first stage of our MPF orders i.e. the line test and production of a line characteristics report. However with the second stage (i.e. physically installing the metallic facility path between the customer’s line and the Trilogy equipment) they will only walk one or two orders through the system Thursday of next week.
(N.B. “Physically installing the metallic facility path” is better known as “laying the cable”!)
Jungle.com (The company was asked ‘Do you still sell blank CDs?’ Instead of simply saying ‘No’, they replied)
’We are currently in the process of consolidating our product range to ensure that the products that we stock are indicative of our brand aspirations. As part of our range consolidation we have also decided to revisit our supplier list and employ a more intelligent system for stock acquisition. As a result of the above certain product lines are now unavailable through jungle.com, whilst potentially remaining available from more mainstream suppliers.’
Lloyds Pharmacy (Rather than simply admit an assistant had dispensed the wrong strength of tablet, and that this mistake had not been picked up by the pharmacist, they wrote this apology).
‘The cognitive process that staff will go through when interpreting prescriptions and selecting drugs is almost intuitive in that the prescription will be read, a decision is then made in the mind of the individual concerned, they will then make a selection based on what they have decided. When an error is made either mentally or in the physical selection process it is difficult for the individual concerned to detect their own error because in their own mind they have made the correct selection.’
Tags: City of Edinburgh Council, Mind Mapping, Writing Dynamics™ (Training), Written Communication