Insider jargon, bad customer service, airline

Airlinese

May 16th 2011, 16:57 by R.L.G. | AIR TRAVEL HELL

IT’S boring to say that airline travel has become a nightmare. From shedding belt and shoes at security, to being told to put your hands by your ears like a grand-theft-auto suspect so someone can evaluate what you look like under your clothes, to the watery four-dollar coffee with non-dairy creamer, to the ever-shrinking services offered by the carriers at ever-higher prices, no frequent air traveller needs reminding that flying today is less fun than most bus travel, and not always faster.

But when inevitable things go wrong and make the experience even worse, the airlines can do one big thing to help themselves in my affections: speak like human beings to the miserable customers. I’m stuck right now at the wrong airport due to a “ground stop”; the way this information was relayed, I had no idea what it meant or which airport was affected. As I shuffled off the plane I’d just boarded with my fellow sufferers I asked the pilot, “does that mean the weather at LaGuardia means we can’t land?”  “Yeah, zero visibility.”  Why hadn’t they just said that?

In general, flying is filled with phrases you’ll never hear anywhere else. You must “deplane”, not just leave the airplane. In a theatre you’re asked to switch your mobile phone off; on an American airline you’re told to put all electronic devices "in the off position”, whatever that is. Carry-on suitcases with wheels apparently became "rollerboards" "roll-aboards" in the mouths of the airline staff at some point. Many of the instructions seem replete with extra verbiage: seats and tray tables in "the full upright and locked position". Flights that are not just full but completely full.

Finally, one last thing about airlinese: the weird intonation that makes flight attendants stress every auxiliary verb:  “This is a completely full flight, so we do ask you to keep your bags beneath your seats. Federal regulations do prohibit smoking on all flights and you are asked to please not smoke in the lavatories.  All electronic items must now be switched off as we have closed the doors and are preparing to taxi.”  It’s weird. I notice when flight attendants don’t do this, and I appreciate it, because I hear a real human at the other end of the curly wire.

Most professions (including journalism) have insider language that has a social value for its users.  Lawyers, consultants, athletes and others are no different. But anyone dealing with the public (especially when giving them bad news like a ground stop) is well advised to put aside the jargon.  It makes you look not professional, but aloof and clueless about what your customers are going through.

Source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/05/insider_language

Simon Heffer - Prescriptivism: Tabloid Exaggeration

Strictly English by Simon Heffer: Part Three

In the third of four extracts from his book instructing us on correct written English, Simon Heffer tackles the language of tabloid exaggeration

By Simon Heffer

4:33PM BST 02 Sep 2010

The language of tabloid exaggeration is apparent on every page of what the trade calls the “red-top” newspapers. Prices soar, and then they crash. In politics, rows about issues are always erupting, and they are inevitably furious. The key participants in them clash, and they evince rage. The consequence of an outrage is that there will be a probe, leading up to a damning report. Its shock findings will be followed by a clampdown (or a crackdown). The opponents of the transgressors will slam their behaviour and seek to topple them.

Any death, especially of a teen, is a tragedy, and if more than one person dies it is a catastrophe. It leaves grieving loved ones gutted. Should the victim be a young girl, she was bubbly, especially if blonde. Young men, unless proven criminals, had in their lives had huge respect from their mates.

On the sport pages, managers of soccer teams vow that their sides will do better, knowing they risk being axed if they do not. Should a team suddenly become brilliant it will be because a star player has shown he is a hero, and can expect a hike in his wages. He may then launch a new career as a fashion icon. Should the team crash to defeat in a cup final, all its fans would be devastated.

Celebs will usually have amazing lifestyles that are revealed by the tabloid press as a series of stunning events. These will often be fuelled by champagne and sometimes by drugs. They entail living in a million-pound home, but also possibly sharing a love nest with a stunner and, as the paper will reveal, a love child as a result of extensive cheating on a spouse. The wronged woman (for it usually is a woman) will be brave during her ordeal: until it emerges that she has had a toyboy too, with whom there have been nights of nookie.

Some of the italicised words are pure slang and have no place in respectable writing – celebs and nookie, for example. Others come under the heading of coy or vulgar euphemism – toyboy, love child, love nest, cheating and stunner are what might more directly be called gigolo, illegitimate child, flat, committing adultery and mistress.

Some are simply failures of terminology: those who ride horses go riding, not horse riding; and those who shoot or hunt practise field sports. Blood sports is a politically loaded term popularised by opponents of field sports, and often used unwittingly by newspapers that have no editorial objection to them.

The main objection to most of the tabloid language highlighted above is that it devalues the currency. If somebody is devastated because his football team has lost a match, how does he feel when he gets home and finds his wife and children have been killed in a fire? If a woman is brave because of her reaction to the way in which her philandering husband embarrasses her publicly, how are we to describe her if she endures with courage and fortitude a horrible and potentially fatal illness? How can the ordeal of one experience compare with that of the other?

If one death, however sad for those concerned, is a tragedy, how does one describe the moral effect of a plane crash in which 400 people are killed? If a man who scores a goal is a hero, what term do we reserve to describe one who wins the Victoria Cross? If an MP suffers shame because he claims for a food mixer improperly on his expenses, what does he suffer if he is convicted of a criminal offence? If he is disgraced for being found in bed with someone else’s wife, what adjective do we use of him if he is found to have perpetrated a systematic fraud, or is convicted of paedophilia?

Above all, if unexceptional facts (often supplied to the newspaper by a celebrity’s public relations adviser) are described as having been revealed when, in fact, all they have been is disclosed, what verb is to be used for something that is a genuine revelation?

Other words have become clichés and are therefore meaningless. Little weight is carried now by the metaphorical use of verbs such as soar, crash, launch, emerge, fuel and clash. Nouns like toff, fat cat, clampdown and icon are just lazy labels for people or for abstract activities; so too are phrases such as damning report and shock finding.

Respect (huge or otherwise) in this context is an absurdity. It has become a word used in urban argot to describe not a feeling of reverence by one for another, but what a self-regarding person who has watched too many gangster films imagines is the estimation in which he should be held by others.

* Strictly English: the Correct Way to Write… and Why It Matters by Simon Heffer (Random House, £12.99 t £11.99) is published on Sept 9

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/7978041/Strictly-English-by-Simon-Heffer-Part-Three.html

Military Doublespeak

English suffers collateral damage

Posted by Michael Rundell on September 11, 2011

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Kerry Maxwell’s next BuzzWord article will be discussing the term 9/11 and related words, but in this post we’ll look more broadly at the linguistic fallout of the tragic events of 10 years ago.  Wars always leave their mark on a language. They give rise to new words and expressions, and often give fresh life to older words or invest them with new meanings. So what impact have the events of 9/11 had on English?

9/11 sparked off two ‘conventional’ wars (the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan) and to the so-called war on terror – sometimes known as the ‘global war on terror’, or GWOT. Some people wondered ‘how do you wage war on an abstract noun?’, and the absence of a clearly definable enemy led to other linguistic acrobatics. People in Iraq who took up arms to oppose uninvited invaders were described as insurgents. Some would argue this is a misuse of the term, but it has a long history of being used in exactly this way – notably during the British Empire to brand armed opponents of colonial rule. More sinister was the use of unlawful combatant – the label given to anyone incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay (or Gitmo, as it became known). The detainees weren’t called prisoners of war (that would have given them rights under the Geneva Convention), presumably because the ‘war on terror’ wasn’t a ‘real’ war. Or was it?

In an ill-advised move, President Bush revived the word crusade to describe US actions. To be fair to Bush, he was probably invoking the ‘generic’ and often positive use of the term (found in expressions like ‘a crusade against corruption/poverty/people-trafficking’). But he failed to consider the negative connotations of crusade for people in the Middle East: the original Crusades of the 11th to 13th centuries were holy wars waged by Christians against Muslims, and often involved appalling massacres. The word was quickly dropped. The invasion of Iraq itself was codenamed Operation Iraqi Freedom (there’s a rumour it was going to be called ‘Operation Iraq Liberation’ – but the resulting acronym didn’t give quite the right message), and it applied the military doctine of shock and awe. This had been devised in the 1990s to characterise the use of sudden and overwhelming force. But the term gained widespead currency during the Iraq war, and seeped into popular culture, being used to describe anything from advertising campaigns or management styles to the tactics of a football team:

The gentle nature of the songs and the lack of  shock and awe in the band’s performance would be better suited to a more intimate venue.

Members of the public were treated to the school’s “Shock and Awe” Christmas chemistry magic show.

Shock and awe was a feature of what was now being described as asymmetric warfare: on one side, massively superior resources and military technology; on the other, people who were ill-equipped but still able to inflict significant damage – not least by their willingness to become suicide bombers (and hence martyrs).

The military’s fondness for Orwellian euphemism (seen for example in terms like friendly fire or collateral damage, which originated during the Vietnam war) is well represented in post-9/11 usage. What most people would call torture acquired a new name: enhanced interrogation techniques. The clearly unpleasant process of kidnapping suspected terrorists and flying them to ‘sympathetic’ regimes (who would apply enhanced interrogation techniques) was described using the harmless-sounding word rendition. Until this point, rendition usually meant the way someone performed a poem, a song, or something similar, and our corpus shows it is an overwhelmingly positive word: there are numerous examples of  ‘superb’, ‘beautiful’, ‘moving’ and ‘stunning’ renditions, and hardly any with more negative adjectives. As Michael Hoey would probably argue, this familiar use could ‘prime‘ us to think of rendition in a positive light.

It would be a pity to end without mentioning Donald Rumsfeld’s famous contribution to the philosophy of conflict – the notion that there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. Though this was widely ridiculed it makes more sense than you may think. Interestingly, the one Rumsfeld missed (unknown knowns - things you know, but which you don’t realise you know) is a good way of describing the experience of analysing language in a corpus: you keep coming across facts which bring a spark of recognition, so at some level you already knew them, but without the corpus data you would probably never have thought of them.

Source: http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/english-suffers-collateral-damage

Overused Business Gobbledygook words LinkedIn

LinkedIn Reveals the 10 Most Overused Job-Hunter Buzzwords

December 15, 2010 by Jolie O'Dell 299 

 

LinkedIn has just posted the 10 most overused, tired and trite buzzwords that get slapped onto resumes and professional profiles around the U.S. and 11 other countries.

According to our LinkedIn profiles, a great many of us tend to describe ourselves as motivated team players with extensive experience.

Ironically, “innovative” is the second-most clichéd word found in LinkedIn profiles. You’d think we’d be able to be more innovative with our vocabularies, no?

Sadly, those of you who took a more creative approach to describing yourselves have been penalized in the past as well. All the LinkedIn “ninjas” got called out earlier this year along with “evangelists” and “gurus” for using these rising menaces of career-oriented buzzwords.

Still, the most common words in LinkedIn profiles are less flashy and more conservative. We’re calling ourselves “motivated,” “results-oriented” and “problem solvers.” And this isn’t just in the U.S.; words like “motivated” and “dynamic” popped up as the most overused terms from Brazil to India.




Compelling descriptions, headlines and keywords are some of the most important aspects for job hunters to consider when creating and editing their LinkedIn profiles, and it’s one of the easiest aspects, too — much easier than getting a slew of recommendations or spending quality time on the site’s Q&A section.
In the comments, we’d love to get your tips and suggestions for finding and using better self-descriptors on LinkedIn, resumes and other professional networks. What unique terms do you use to describe yourself professionally?

Source: http://mashable.com/2010/12/14/linkedin-resume-buzzwords/

Political correctness too far

It’s political correctness gone mad (Part 1 of 2)

Posted by Michael Rundell on August 17, 2011

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In his popular post on pronouns, Stan Carey mentions an experiment in gender-free language in a Swedish school, and asks whether this is a positive idea or ‘an exercise in political correctness’. Political correctness and the related adjective politically correct are good examples of words that have undergone ‘pejoration’: originally neutral or even positive terms, they have gradually taken on more negative connotations, to the point that they are now used only in order to criticize. Not only that, their range has broadened so that they are employed not only to characterise certain language usages but also – as we will see in Part 2 of this post – as an all-purpose explanation for just about anything the speaker disapproves of.

As the definition in the Macmillan Dictionary suggests, political correctness was originally a strategy for combating discrimination, and its focus was language. The rationale is that language and social attitudes are closely linked – and there is plenty of sociolinguistic evidence to support this idea. The unthinking use of negative terms when talking about people who belong to any kind of minority is bound to affect the way such people are viewed. But, the argument goes, if these negative terms become socially unacceptable and are replaced by more ‘inclusive’ language, then attitudes will change too. The goal, in other words, is not simply to avoid offending people (on the basis of their race, gender, sexuality or disability) but to change perceptions in society as a whole.

It is hard to see how any reasonable person could object to this, and it’s no surprise that the British National Corpus, most of whose texts come from the 1980s, includes sentences like:

Women like him too [Bill Clinton], and not just for his civil rights stand and political correctness.

Here, the writer clearly sees political correctness as a virtue. But as time goes on, we begin to hear about cases where (in some people’s opinion) the idea has ‘gone too far’, giving rise eventually to widespread hostility to the whole concept – and to the ‘pejoration’ of the term itself.

At the end of the 1990s, the city council in Birmingham (England, not Alabama) organised a series of concerts, shows, and other public events around the Christmas period, and called the whole thing ‘Winterval’ (a blend of winter and festival). This was interpreted by some critics as an exaggerated attempt to avoid offending people from non-Christian faiths, and the mayor was accused of ‘declaring war on Christmas’. Things weren’t really as simple as that (the mayor pointed out there was a banner saying ‘Merry Christmas’ on the City Hall, and Christmas trees in several public squares), but this became one of many situations branded as ‘political correctness gone mad’. Another was the apocryphal story that a children’s pantomime had been renamed ‘Snow White and the Seven Vertically Challenged Males’, on the grounds that the traditional name (‘the Seven Dwarfs’) was insulting to people of lower than average height.

In Part 2 of this post, we’ll see how the backlash to political correctness gave rise first to satire and then to outright hostility, as the term was hijacked by particular interest groups.

Source: http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/its-political-correctness-gone-mad-part-1-of-2

What’s a nice girl like you doing in a dictionary like this?

Posted by Michael Rundell on August 10, 2011

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In a recent comment, Stan mentioned a newpaper headline about a ‘missing girl’ who was in fact a 30-year-old woman. As he pointed out, ‘there’s no way “missing boy” would have been used to describe a man of 30’ – and this is more or less the message given in the Macmillan Dictionary’s entry for girl. It ends with a note headed ‘Avoiding Offence’, whose advice includes this:

Avoid using girl if it would seem wrong to use boy about a young man of the same age.

And if you look at the definitions in this entry, you’ll see that most include warnings about potentially offensive uses. All of which shows what a minefield this area of language can be. So what can – or should – dictionaries do about language and gender?

It’s a fundamental principle of lexicography that the dictionary’s role is to explain what words mean by observing how people use them – not to make pronouncements about what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. It follows that dictionaries shouldn’t take sides in any area of language use, but in some cases this is unavoidable. Back in the 1980s, I had the job of editing a dictionary to produce a second edition, and I noticed that the first edition included this definition of apartheid (this was at a time when the apartheid system was still in full force):

the keeping separate of races of different colours in one country, especially of Europeans and non-Europeans in South Africa

We changed this to:

in South Africa, the system established by the government of keeping different races separate, especially so as to give advantage to white people

At first sight, the original definition looks more ‘neutral’: it describes the policy, without imputing any motive to those who operated it. But at that time apartheid was a highly contentious issue, and a definition which failed to mention the oppressive nature of apartheid could be seen as endorsing it.

With issues of gender, we face similar dilemmas. As cultural artefacts, dictionaries inevitably reflect the norms of their societies and their times. The original (1969) edition of the American Heritage Dictionary defines a plumber as ‘a workman who installs and repairs pipes and plumbing’, and most older dictionaries show a pervasive male bias. On the other hand, if we try too hard to redress this, we could be accused of tokenism or of manipulating the language. It’s a fact, for example, that corpus evidence shows that verbs like nag, gossip and chatter are mainly used with women as subjects, but should this be reflected in the example sentences we choose for the dictionary – or does that just perpetuate negative stereotypes?

Then there is the question of how to define words like termagant, harridan, virago, or shrew. It’s well-known that there are far more words like this for women than for men, and arguably most were invented by men for the purpose of belittling, insulting, or marginalising women. As you’ll see in our definition for harpy, there are plenty of warnings about the effects words like this may produce in the listener or reader. This brings us back to our entry for girl, which also carries warnings about some uses which may cause offence. On the whole, dictionaries do make an effort to portray women (whether in definitions or example sentences) in positive roles, and at Macmillan, our style guide for editors contains advice on avoiding gender bias. This could be seen as a form of ‘language engineering’ – of interfering with the objective data in order to promote a particular view. But we would argue that a dictionary aimed mainly at learners needs to inform its users (whose own cultures may be very different) not only what words mean, but what sensitivities are associated with them.

Source: http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/whats-a-nice-girl-like-you-doing-in-a-dictionary-like-this

Corporate Buzzwords

Should HR buzzwords be banned?

HR neologisms –sometimes helpful, sometimes annoying

      

By Brian Kreissl

Jun 14, 2011

Do HR professionals seem particularly guilty of inventing new jargon and buzzwords? It seems as soon as we’re used to referring to an idea or concept by a certain name, someone comes along and changes it – often by telling us the new term means something radically new and different, and somehow the old terminology just doesn’t cut it anymore.

I know business in general is often accused of inventing all kinds of gobbledygook, but can we in HR be singled out especially for criticism in this regard? In my mind, the answer is, “Yes and no.”

While it’s true we have our own constantly changing vocabulary in the HR profession, that’s no different than any other profession. Words sometimes need to be created to describe specific concepts, and jargon functions as a kind of shorthand for people in certain lines of work. It’s much easier to use one word rather than many to describe something – provided people know what you’re actually talking about.

When I took an editing course earlier this year, one of the things we learned is to avoid neologisms (newly coined words or phrases that haven’t yet entered the lexicon of everyday usage).

Depending on the audience, that can be very wise advice. But what if your audience consists of people in your own professional group and that profession seems to thrive on the creation of new words and phrases? What if you’re viewed as a dinosaur for calling something by its old name?

Let’s examine a few HR neologisms and find out just how new and innovative those terms really are, and if there’s a rationale for replacing the old terminology.

Personnel, human resources and human capital management
“Personnel” is of course a dirty word to most HR professionals nowadays. Supposedly, personnel represented the “bad old days” of transactional HR management, which involved little more than hiring, firing and recordkeeping.

Yet, I’ve had conversations with people outside the profession who still like personnel better. They feel “human resources management” just sounds cold. “I’m a person,” they argue, “not a resource.”

I have some sympathy for those folks because, to me, the newer term “human capital management” sounds cold. I know, the idea is people should be viewed as capital assets, just as buildings, plant and equipment are. This ties into the cliché that “our people are our greatest assets.”

However, I remain unconvinced. “Human capital management” just sounds like something a consulting company created to drum up more business by sounding trendy and sophisticated.

Orientation to onboarding
I once had a colleague who passionately believed onboarding to be much broader than the traditional concept of orientation. I was sceptical at the time.

However, just thinking about what comes to mind when you hear “onboarding,” it really does have much broader connotations than orientation. While orientation seems to suggest a one-time seminar or a very short initiative during a new employee’s first few days on the job, onboarding just sounds more strategic, holistic and long-term.

Empowerment to employee engagement
Remember how everyone was talking about empowering employees back in the nineties? While some commentators believe employee engagement is just a new-fangled term for empowerment, employee engagement is about more than just empowerment.

It’s about increasing employee commitment to their jobs and the organization, and the degree of discretionary effort. One way of doing that is through empowerment, but it isn’t the only way. Therefore, I’d argue employee engagement is broader than empowerment.

Compensation to total rewards management
‘Total rewards management” might seem a bit trendy, but this is broader than simply talking about compensation. Total rewards looks at all of the extrinsic rewards (including salary, bonuses, benefits, pensions and perks) as well as the intrinsic rewards inherent in the job itself. “Compensation” is still used, but today it refers more to cash compensation.

Employer branding
One HR neologism that seems to be an entirely new concept is employer or employment branding. The idea is that all organizations have some type of “brand” or perception associated with what it might be like to work there.

Organizations look at creating and managing that brand and positioning their company as an employer of choice. This is a new and exciting area of HR – one I don’t think really had a proper name ten years ago.

A healthy, innovative profession
Therefore, other than “human capital” – which I’ve already noted I’m not too fond of – I believe new HR terms frequently have something new to add to the discussion.

While we shouldn’t shoot down people for using old terminology, the fact that the lexicon of HR continues to evolve and expand shows how healthy and innovative we are.

Just don’t ask me to call it “human capital management.” Maybe in five years I’ll accept it, but I’m just not there yet.

Source: http://www.hrreporter.com/blog/HR-Policies-Practices/archive/2011/06/14/should-hr-buzzwords-be-banned

Why Plain English is better

Weaselly recognised

Posted by Stan Carey on June 01, 2011

Last week I wrote a parody of corporate communication as part of a competition for Macmillan Dictionary’s Business English month. Enjoyable as it was to write, I had even more fun reading the responses – readers’ translations of my imperfect storm of management buzzwords. The comments showed how naturally people see through (and play with) this kind of language, even when it borders on incomprehensibility.

It is satisfying to replace officialese and ‘corporatese’ with more direct and meaningful words, to use our creativity – whether mentally or in a more concrete way – to improve vague and inflated guff. But gobbledegook remains all too customary in business and politics, and the inexorable creep of commercialisation and politicisation means that it is apt to end up almost anywhere. It seems to spread partly by contagion; in all but the most careful speakers, passive exposure can lead to use.

Fortunately there are efforts in the other direction, promoting plain language. For example, President Obama recently signed into law the Plain Writing Act of 2010, which obliges federal agencies in the U.S. to use “clear Government communication that the public can understand and use”. In 2009, the Local Government Association in the UK listed 200 words and phrases to avoid. Although the LGA clearly meant well, some of the words it blacklisted were useful, and some of the alternatives it suggested were little or no improvement on the undesirable jargon.

My parody article obscured the act of firing people. This act can be a regrettable economic necessity during a prolonged credit crunch, but euphemising it with periphrasis and weasel words like rightsizing, downsizing, offshoring, strategic reorganisation, involuntary career realignment or decruitment implementation event doesn’t make anyone feel better about it. On the contrary: it demeans and irritates people. It pushes their irritation buttons.

Plain English is a frank and straightforward style that does not lend itself readily to expressing longwinded nonsense and hiding unpleasant facts. It is well suited to conveying meaning clearly and without guile, thereby showing a measure of respect for people’s intelligence, feelings, and capacity for dealing with difficult truths and situations – not “challengeful reality-based outcomes, going forward”. Our brains do a lot of hard work decoding language into sense; in business, it doesn’t pay to multiply this workload.

Source:

Out with gobbledygook, in with Plain English

Nails on a blackboard: legalese and management-speak

Posted by Briony Drimie on May 19, 2011

Business English month continues with a guest post on legal English and management-speak.

_________

My relationship with Business English began at university, where I studied Law. From legal summaries involving sentences that spanned over a hundred lines to words that I remain convinced were made up on the spot, the use of language depended entirely on which side of a case was argued. Legal language was my introduction to the fact that language could be less about clear communication and be more of an art form, clarifying or obfuscating points of law in order to sway an argument.

Despite being considered overly wordy, lawyers are very caught up in individual words, for the definition of a word, or indeed its absence in a sentence can be the pivotal point of a case. By example, one of the first cases students are taught is that of Adler v George. The law stated it was an offence to obstruct HM forces “in the vicinity” of a prohibited place. The defence argued that the defendant was innocent as he was “in” a prohibited place when he obstructed HM forces and not in the vicinity of it. The Judges didn’t agree but it goes to show how a case can hinge on a single word.

Legal language contains many phrases rooted in Latin that define specific legal concepts, such as mens rea or habeas corpus which have evolved as part of the legal process. These phrases don’t mean anything to many of us but they perform a necessary function within Law and are in their own way precisely defined. As such, I can easily tolerate their use in a professional context.

However, upon moving from Law to corporate business, I discovered that there was a vein of Business English I had been protected from: what we commonly know as management-speak, which I have loathed since I first heard it. It reached a head several months ago, when a man I’d never spoken with suggested that he “hit my imagination button”.

I have no issue with the use of metaphor in speech. However, within the business industry, usage seems to have spiralled out of control. Some management-speak phrases grate more than others: a friend of mine loathes “singing from the same hymn sheet” whilst I find “speaking with one voice” irritating. Equally, I find “going forward” problematic. Forward refers to distance and is inappropriate in referring to time. Particularly when phrases such as “in the future”, “from now on”, “soon”, “shortly” “imminently” and “at the earliest opportunity” are all viable alternatives.

A prevailing irritation is the curse of the noun-as-a-verb, leading to “transitioning into a new team” or “incentivating the workforce”. I find these nouns-as-verbs to be the linguistic equivalent of nails on a blackboard. These sentences are clunky and could be expressed in a cleaner way. For example, someone could “move” to a new team or “give” staff an incentive.

In an age when more of our business is conducted internationally and we have language barriers to cross, isn’t it time to promote Plain English?

Source: http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/legalese-and-management-speak

Business gobbledygook + winning translation

Critical learnings, going forward

Posted by Stan Carey on May 25, 2011

Macmillan Dictionary Blog very much hopes this will hit your imagination button . Regular guest blogger Stan Carey presents you with a challenge this week. Below you will find a letter written to staff in ‘business-speak’. Your task is to ‘translate’ it into plain (but still Business) English and add your version as a comment below. Stan reckons you can sum it up in a couple of sentences … but that’s no fun. We’ll send the writer of our favourite ‘translation’ a Macmillan English Dictionary of their choice.

___________

Dear employee,

It has come to our attention that productivity drivers are suboptimal, which clearly impacts performance deliverables. We have touched base with HQ and undergone a period of extensive consultation. Actioning this decision-making process requires frontminding streamlined competencies. We anticipate a needs-based harmonisation gap in employee feelings vis-à-vis these necessary outcomes, but we are tasked with maximising the ball-parking of our projected equity outcomes.

Our architectural assets house a raft of measures towards the provision of key learnings for the upsizing of overall skill sets. These operation-centric initiatives push stakeholders’ imagination buttons by crystal balling their high-level ROI expectations. The ensuing agreeance modules accelerate in the core bump space facilities, including food consumption areas, which allows human-sensitive package expansion and back-ended value development. However, executive brainstorming processes suggest that licking the employee envelope has functionality limits.

In short, synergistic knowledgings inputted clear indicators of off-message dialoguing exchanges in semi-salaried discussants’ cooler-based mutual interfacings. In the light of a data-driven assessment, we have scoped the conclusion that these non-centre locality behaviours undermine our company’s alpha potential when factoring in our enhanced string-paradigm alignment to the green growth environment via the meaningful actualisation of our industry-topping integrity footprint.

Therefore our dedication to escalating our core endeavours through transparently iterated evaluative methodologies that represent best practice in emergent collaborative counter-engineering necessitates a decruitment implementation event. This involves non-pensionable productivity management parameters through the creative restructuring of personnel irregularities and necessary throughput of human capital capacity rightsizing.

Parties affected downstream are encouraged to utilise their forward thinking hats and realign their tool belts to the non-ongoing contract situation within a short timeframe totality. We anticipate dynamic new overarching metrics of holistic staff wellbeingness at the end of the day. Surfing where the waves are should galvanise a global blue-sky modality that will roll out and trickle down the Monday mood mountain into the value valley.

The bottom line is that this innovative accounting strategy built on our thought-leaders’ primary policies will cascade the empowerment of partnership change points in the hands-on repurposing of mission critical networks and facilitate across-the-board calibration, transitioning from a space of underperfect monetisation streams to an achievable year-end profit margin, and leveraging consecutive game plans to uptick a full-spectrum benchmarking solution.

We are grateful for your understanding.



Winning 'translation':

Underling,

You have failed yet again, which means the company is failing because of you. The powers that be know of your failings. They have given us the authority to act swiftly and brutally. For the good of the company, you will be granted no mercy.

We can make the company better, stronger, faster. We have the technology. First step: less eating, more working.

Second step: less talking, more working. You bottom feeders will no longer have the opportunity to even talk about forming a revolution, which to us is more annoying than it is hopeless.
Step three: say goodbye to the person sitting next to you. You will now be doing their job as well as your own. You’re welcome.

Now… mush!

Your failings will not cause this company to lose money. Do you understand? This company is in the business of making money and we intend to make lots of money. You are in the business of doing what we tell you to do and we intend to tell you to do a lot.

As always, you have no say in this.

Posted by Joe McVeigh on 25th May, 2011


Source: http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/critical-learnings-going-forward

Need for Plain English

Take big, wonderful and startling ideas and make them comprehensible

You've got metaphor, analogy and imagery at your disposal, and a lexicon that would be the envy of Shakespeare. Tim Radford reveals the secrets of good science writing

Shakespeare deployed around 30,000 different words. Biology alone has added 60,000 new words to the language. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty

Science writing would be easy if it were not for two problems: the ideas and the words. The ideas are quite often either counterintuitive, unimaginable or just very difficult (think special relativity, cosmic inflation, dark matter, quantum states, epigenetics or almost anything to do with cell biology) and the words are unfamiliar, misleading or simply hostile: how many non-scientists do you know who instantly understand what you mean by an alpha particle, a sodium ion channel, a phenotype or Mesozoic?

The ideas, however, are also part of the delight. Science writers get the chance to compose sentences that have never been written before. How many poets, sports reporters or political correspondents ever have that privilege?

But the words really are a problem. In the first place, there are an awful lot of scientific words. According to a casual aside in a Nature review two years ago, biology alone has added 60,000 new words to the Oxford English Dictionary. Shakespeare composed all his sonnets, plays and poems with a lexicon of little more than 30,000 words.

Some scientific words are coinages, some of them are existing words with new meanings, and some of them represent ideas that are as freshly minted as the words themselves: that is, they are not in a dictionary at all.
So a science writer has at some point to become a translator; to convert science into journalism without, if possible, using journalese; to take big, wonderful and startling ideas and make them comprehensible with help from metaphor, analogy and imagery, but if possible without using the hand-me-down language of cliché. So that rules out the missing link, the Holy Grail, the magic bullet and Pandora's Box for a start.

To be of any use, a science writer has to deliver something that does not necessarily induce apoplexy in his scientifically trained readership, but at the same time keeps the lay reader glued to the text. This has its own dangers: science isn't simple, but newspaper paragraphs and news bulletin scripts have to be vivid, clear and headlong – in a word, simple, with few asides for proviso or caveat.

Bloggers have the luxury of the optional hyperlink, but they too must write something that will bring their fans back to the web page. In a 450-word account of palaeontological discovery, biomimetic experiment or exoplanet identification, the science writer must navigate between the rock of scientific rigour and the hard place of Ben Goldacre's Bad Science column.

Why go to all that trouble? Alas, science journalism is not a take-it-or-leave it activity. Science is funded by the public, for the public good: in a democracy, journalists have an obligation to report on scientific advance, however baffling. So the hapless hack must decide what the story is, and then write it.

A writer's first duty is always to the reader (without a reader, who says you are a writer?) but unless what you write is also right, why bother? So as Albert Einstein is supposed to have once said, in what I have always imagined was advice to science journalists: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

Thanks Albert. You've been a big help.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/apr/13/secrets-good-science-writing

Acronyms, Jargon + Plain English

Cutting out the capital letters

Apr 20th 2011, 14:01 by R.L.G. | NEW YORK

OVER at Language Log is a discussion of a new directive that is intended to get executive agencies to cut the jargon and acronyms in writing intended for the public. Johnson certainly applauds that effort. But Mark Liberman and other commentators note a few ironies.  One is that the  guidance itself is pretty confusingly worded, as is the underlying  statute (like many other statutes). Mr Liberman's peeve is the confusing scope of conjunctions in acts of Congress: how to interpret simple ands, ors and buts ends up taking up a lot of appellate courts' time.

The second irony, noted by Matt Negrin at Politico, is the name of the set of rules designed to cut masses of capital letters.  It is the Plain Language Action and Information Network. (Update: see correction below.) Get it?  PLAIN?  Ugh. This from the sausage factory that brought you the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. As David Rees wrote in his comic "Get Your War On", "I still can't believe they named that thing the fuckin' USA-PATRIOT Act.  Grown-ups did that. Never forget that."  If I were in Congress I'd sponsor a Prohibiting Naming Laws With Cute Titles Act, or the PNLWCT Act, avoiding initial vowels just to make sure that it's unpronounceable.

Mr Liberman says he doesn't mind acronyms. In technical writing (including statues) you have to refer to specific entities over and over, and some of them have long names.  But there is usually an easy way around this, which Bill Walderman notes and The Economist's style book prescribes: after first mention, use the main noun on second mention:  The European Commission, and thereafter "the commission"; the International Atomic Energy Agency and thereafter "the agency". And statutes or other technical writing can accomplish this with a bit of legalese in parentheses such as "(hereinafter 'the act')".  Only when you have competing acts or commissions in the same article or statute do you have to distinguish which one you mean each time.

Correction:  PLAIN isn't the rulebook, but the group of federal employees that has organised to fight for clearer langauge. It is not new, but hails from the 1990s. The group's website is here. Thanks to Ben Zimmer for the correction.

*Bill Walderman:

1. One other choice: you can introduce short forms of reference, such as National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (hereinafter, the "Institute"); Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (hereinafter, a "transistor"). Actually, you don't need "hereinafter" or even the quotation marks. In a statute or regulation, you can use short-form defined terms with definitions that are limited in scope to a particular provision. ("For purposes of this section, the term "Institute" shall mean the National Institute of . . . "). Using a noun instead of an acronym can sometimes be more helpful to the reader than using an acronym or repeating a long-winded official name.

This proposition seems much easier to understand as readers would have to check back to see what NICHHD mean and that it actually referred to an institute. Is it easier to add a semantics onto an existing word, or remember a new 'word' and its semantics???

Source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/04/acronyms_and_plain_language

Well DUH!

Warning Labels

Manufacturers of consumer products have to be liberal with the warning labels these days, lest they get sued. But for these, it's hard to know whether the company is being outright stupid or if they're simply targeting the most brain dead dumb among us.

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Product Warnings:

"Do not use if you cannot see clearly to read the information in the information booklet." -- In the information booklet.


"Caution: The contents of this bottle should not be fed to fish." -- On a bottle of shampoo for dogs.


"For external use only!" -- On a curling iron.


"Warning: This product can burn eyes." -- On a curling iron.


"Do not use in shower." -- On a hair dryer.


"Do not use while sleeping." -- On a hair dryer.


"Do not use while sleeping or unconscious." -- On a hand-held massaging device.


"Do not place this product into any electronic equipment." -- On the case of a chocolate CD in a gift basket.


"Recycled flush water unsafe for drinking." -- On a toilet at a public sports facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan.


"Shin pads cannot protect any part of the body they do not cover." -- On a pair of shin guards made for bicyclists.


"This product not intended for use as a dental drill." -- On an electric rotary tool.


"Caution: Do not spray in eyes." -- On a container of underarm deodorant.


"Do not drive with sunshield in place." -- On a cardboard sunshield that keeps the sun off the dashboard.


"Caution: This is not a safety protective device." -- On a plastic toy helmet used as a container for popcorn.


"Do not use near fire, flame, or sparks." -- On an "Aim-n-Flame" fireplace lighter.


"Battery may explore or leak." -- On a battery. See a scanned image.


"Do not eat toner." -- On a toner cartridge for a laser printer.


"Not intended for highway use." -- On a 13-inch wheel on a wheelbarrow.


"This product is not to be used in bathrooms." -- On a Holmes bathroom heater.


"May irritate eyes." -- On a can of self-defense pepper spray.


"Eating rocks may lead to broken teeth." -- On a novelty rock garden set called "Popcorn Rock."


"Caution! Contents hot!" -- On a Domino's Pizza box.


"Caution: Hot beverages are hot!" -- On a coffee cup.


"Caution: Shoots rubber bands." -- On a product called "Rubber Band Shooter."


"Warning: May contain small parts." -- On a frisbee.


"Do not use orally." -- On a toilet bowl cleaning brush.


"Please keep out of children." -- On a butcher knife.


"Not suitable for children aged 36 months or less." -- On a birthday card for a 1 year old.


"Do not recharge, put in backwards, or use." -- On a battery.


"Warning: Do not use on eyes." -- In the manual for a heated seat cushion.


"Do not look into laser with remaining eye." -- On a laser pointer.


"Do not use for drying pets." -- In the manual for a microwave oven.


"For use on animals only." -- On an electric cattle prod.


"For use by trained personnel only." -- On a can of air freshener.


"Keep out of reach of children and teenagers." -- On a can of air freshener.


"Remember, objects in the mirror are actually behind you." -- On a motorcycle helmet-mounted rear-view mirror.


"Warning: Riders of personal watercraft may suffer injury due to the forceful injection of water into body cavities either by falling into the water or while mounting the craft." -- In the manual for a jetski.


"Warning: Do not climb inside this bag and zip it up. Doing so will cause injury and death." -- A label inside a protective bag (for fragile objects), which measures 15cm by 15cm by 12cm.


"Do not use as ear plugs." -- On a package of silly putty.


"Please store in the cold section of the refrigerator." -- On a bag of fresh grapes in Australia.


"Warning: knives are sharp!" -- On the packaging of a sharpening stone.


"Not for weight control." -- On a pack of Breath Savers.


"Twist top off with hands. Throw top away. Do not put top in mouth." -- On the label of a bottled drink.


"Theft of this container is a crime." -- On a milk crate.


"Do not use intimately." -- On a tube of deodorant.


"Warning: has been found to cause cancer in laboratory mice." -- On a box of rat poison.


"Fragile. Do not drop." -- Posted on a Boeing 757.


"Cannot be made non-poisonous." -- On the back of a can of de-icing windshield fluid.


"Caution: Remove infant before folding for storage." -- On a portable stroller.


"Excessive dust may be irritating to shin and eyes." -- On a tube of agarose powder, used to make gels.


"Look before driving." -- On the dash board of a mail truck.


"Do not iron clothes on body." -- On packaging for a Rowenta iron.


"Do not drive car or operate machinery." -- On Boot's children's cough medicine.


"For indoor or outdoor use only." -- On a string of Christmas lights.


"Wearing of this garment does not enable you to fly." -- On a child sized Superman costume.


"This door is alarmed from 7:00pm - 7:00am." -- On a hospital's outside access door.


"Beware! To touch these wires is instant death. Anyone found doing so will be prosecuted." -- On a sign at a railroad station.


"Warning: do not use if you have prostate problems." -- On a box of Midol PMS relief tablets.


"Product will be hot after heating." -- On a supermarket dessert box.


"Do not turn upside down." -- On the bottom of a supermarket dessert box.


"Do not light in face. Do not expose to flame." -- On a lighter.


"Choking hazard: This toy is a small ball." -- On the label for a cheap rubber ball toy.


"Not for human consumption." -- On a package of dice.


"May be harmful if swallowed." -- On a shipment of hammers.


"Using Ingenio cookware to destroy your old pots may void your warranty." -- A printed message that appears in a television advertisement when the presenter demonstrates how strong the cookware is by using it to beat up and destroy a regular frying pan.


"Do not attempt to stop the blade with your hand." -- In the manual for a Swedish chainsaw.


"Do not dangle the mouse by its cable or throw the mouse at co-workers." -- From a manual for an SGI computer.


"Warning: May contain nuts." -- On a package of peanuts.


"Do not eat." -- On a slip of paper in a stereo box, referring to the styrofoam packing.


"Do not eat if seal is missing." -- On said seal.


"Remove occupants from the stroller before folding it."


"Access hole only -- not intended for use in lifting box." -- On the sides of a shipping carton, just above cut-out openings which one would assume were handholds.


"Warning: May cause drowsiness." -- On a bottle of Nytol, a brand of sleeping pills.


"Warning: Misuse may cause injury or death." -- Stamped on the metal barrel of a .22 calibre rifle.


"Do not use orally after using rectally." -- In the instructions for an electric thermometer.


"Turn off motor before using this product." -- On the packaging for a chain saw file, used to sharpen the cutting teeth on the chain.


"Not to be used as a personal flotation device." -- On a 6x10 inch inflatable picture frame.


"Do not put in mouth." -- On a box of bottle rockets.


"Remove plastic before eating." -- On the wrapper of a Fruit Roll-Up snack.


"Not dishwasher safe." -- On a remote control for a TV.


"For lifting purposes only." -- On the box for a car jack.


"Do not put lit candles on phone." -- On the instructions for a cordless phone.


"Warning! This is not underwear! Do not attempt to put in pants." -- On the packaging for a wristwatch.


"Do not wear for sumo wrestling." -- From a set of washing instructions. See a scanned image

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Small Print From Commercials:

"Do not use house paint on face." -- In a Visa commercial that depicts an expecting couple looking for paint at a hardware store.


"Do not drive cars in ocean." -- In a car commercial which shows a car in the ocean.


"Always drive on roads. Not on people." -- From a car commercial which shows a vehicle "body-surfing" at a concert.


"For a limited time only." -- From a Rally's commercial that described how their burgers were fresh.

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Signs and Notices:

"No stopping or standing." -- A sign at bus stops everywhere.


"Do not sit under coconut trees." -- A sign on a coconut palm in a West Palm Beach park circa 1950.


"These rows reserved for parents with children." -- A sign in a church.


"All cups leaving this store, rather full or empty, must be paid for." -- A sign in a Cumberland Farms in Hillsboro, New Hampshire.


"Malfunction: Too less water." -- A notice left on a coffee machine.


"Prescriptions cannot be filled by phone." -- On a form in a clinic.


"You could be a winner! No purchase necessary. Details inside." -- On a bag of Fritos.


"Fits one head." -- On a hotel-provided shower cap box.


"Payment is due by the due date." -- On a credit card statement.


"No small children." -- On a laundromat triple washer.


"Warning: Ramp Ends In Stairs." -- A sign, correctly describing the end of a concrete ramp intended for handicap access to a bridge.

---

Safety Procedures:

"Take care: new non-slip surface." -- On a sign in front of a newly renovated ramp that led to the entrance of a building.


"In case of flood, proceed uphill. In case of flash flood, proceed uphill quickly." -- One of the emergency safety procedures at a summer camp.

Ingredients:

"Ingredients: Artificially bleached flour, sugar, vegetable fat, yeast, salt, gluten, soya flour, emulsifier 472 (E) & 481, flour treatment agents, enzymes, water. May contain: fruit." -- The ingredients list on a package of fruit buns.


"100% pure yarn." -- On a sweater.


"Some materials may irritate sensitive skin. Please look at the materials if you believe this may be the case.
Materials:
Covering: 100% Unknown.
Stuffing: 100% Unknown."
-- On a pillow.


"Cleans and refreshes without soap or water. Contains: Water, fragrance & soap." -- On the packet for a moist towelette. See a scanned image.

---

Instructions:

"Remove the plastic wrapper." -- The first instruction on a bag of microwave popcorn; to see the instructions, one first has to remove the plastic wrapper and unfold the pouch.


"Take one capsule by mouth three times daily until gone." -- On a box of pills.


"Open packet. Eat contents." -- Instructions on a packet of airline peanuts.


"Remove wrapper, open mouth, insert muffin, eat." -- Instructions on the packaging for a muffin at a 7-11.


"Use like regular soap." -- On a bar of Dial soap.


"Instructions: usage known." -- Instructions on a can of black pepper.


"Serving suggestion: Defrost." -- On a Swann frozen dinner.


"Simply pour the biscuits into a bowl and allow the cat to eat when it wants." -- On a bag of cat biscuits.


"In order to get out of car, open door, get out, lock doors, and then close doors." -- In a car manual.


"Please include the proper portion of your bill." -- On the envelope for an auto insurance bill.


"The appliance is switched on by setting the on/off switch to the 'on' position." -- Instructions for an espresso kettle.


"For heat-retaining corrugated cardboard technology to function properly, close lid." -- On a Domino's sandwich box.

---

Requirements:

"Optional modem required." -- On a computer software package.


Source: http://www.rinkworks.com/said/warnings.shtml