Maybe not quite as good as Shakespeare but everybody is a writer. Except when they write on behalf of their company. We all have read meaningless but at first glance good sounding sentences. Here is a 'good' one from the what-we-do section of a company: "By infusing our products with beauty and personality driven by our users, every experience feels made to order". Any clue as to what that company really does on a day-to-day basis? I can tell you that the one thing they don't sell is a physical product. By the way, it gets worse when you read that out loud. Yet it's one of the first things I came across when researching for a job, trying to find out more about the company.
It's a classic example where language is used to sound exciting even though it probably has an effect to the contrary. Daniel M. Oppenheimer, professor of psychology at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, argues in his Nobel prize winning paper "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with using long words needlessly" that simple writing makes authors appear more intelligent than complex writing.
Why bother at all you may ask. Well, if it’s an email to your team, and you are the boss, they will most likely read it anyway. But everybody else, who has the freedom to ignore your emails, announcements or offers, will. And if it's a website, they might go to a competitor instead. Unless they find your musings interesting enough to carry on reading.
But shouldn’t business writing be serious I hear you say? After all, it’s business – not personal, right? Maybe. But ask yourself this, would you rather read something that sounds like it’s coming from a machine? An unfathomable entity hiding behind words? Or would you prefer something that clearly was written by another human being? If the latter, making your text more personal is the way to go. And wouldn’t you like to be more persuasive, surprising and interesting? You do? Excellent. So why don't we write simple and understandable? We do it when we speak to each other. Mostly.
The reason is that we follow the language that is wisely used in companies by colleagues and superiors. It's formal to the point of legal. Don't get me wrong, you don’t have to go the complete opposite become all matey and chummy. Just don’t be unnecessary formal. Let me give you an example. Rather than using the dimensions 51x109x73 metres, NASA describes the size of the international space station, including its large solar arrays, as 'spanning the area of a U.S. football field'. By using an easy to understand visual instead of plain numbers they make it more digestible.
There really is no reason at all why even a disclaimer has to be dull, long winded, bureaucratic and littered with jargon. Or include pesky abbreviations. To be fair, abbreviations allow us to be short and safe time (and writing space). Unfortunately that only works if everybody knows the meaning; take 'laser' for example (yes it's an abbreviation). But lots of abbreviations have more than one meaning.
I use one simple guiding principle that has let to great results: Write more like you speak. The way you speak to friends, family or colleagues. Other than being easily understood, there are more good reasons.
Every time a piece of writing was overly complicated and I asked the author, aka a colleague, to explain it to me, I got a “what I meant to say was…”. What usually follows is a simple and easy to understand summary. My usual response is: “excellent, just write that”. Follow your instinct of how you would say it to another person in the room. Make it personal.
It's a classic example where language is used to sound exciting even though it probably has an effect to the contrary. Daniel M. Oppenheimer, professor of psychology at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, argues in his Nobel prize winning paper "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with using long words needlessly" that simple writing makes authors appear more intelligent than complex writing.
Why bother at all you may ask. Well, if it’s an email to your team, and you are the boss, they will most likely read it anyway. But everybody else, who has the freedom to ignore your emails, announcements or offers, will. And if it's a website, they might go to a competitor instead. Unless they find your musings interesting enough to carry on reading.
But shouldn’t business writing be serious I hear you say? After all, it’s business – not personal, right? Maybe. But ask yourself this, would you rather read something that sounds like it’s coming from a machine? An unfathomable entity hiding behind words? Or would you prefer something that clearly was written by another human being? If the latter, making your text more personal is the way to go. And wouldn’t you like to be more persuasive, surprising and interesting? You do? Excellent. So why don't we write simple and understandable? We do it when we speak to each other. Mostly.
The reason is that we follow the language that is wisely used in companies by colleagues and superiors. It's formal to the point of legal. Don't get me wrong, you don’t have to go the complete opposite become all matey and chummy. Just don’t be unnecessary formal. Let me give you an example. Rather than using the dimensions 51x109x73 metres, NASA describes the size of the international space station, including its large solar arrays, as 'spanning the area of a U.S. football field'. By using an easy to understand visual instead of plain numbers they make it more digestible.
There really is no reason at all why even a disclaimer has to be dull, long winded, bureaucratic and littered with jargon. Or include pesky abbreviations. To be fair, abbreviations allow us to be short and safe time (and writing space). Unfortunately that only works if everybody knows the meaning; take 'laser' for example (yes it's an abbreviation). But lots of abbreviations have more than one meaning.
I use one simple guiding principle that has let to great results: Write more like you speak. The way you speak to friends, family or colleagues. Other than being easily understood, there are more good reasons.
- It helps you stand out
- It can make your customers like you more
- It can make your team like you more
- A convincing email or proposal might even make or save you money
- The tone of voice has an impact on the brand. Just as images, colours and people’s behaviour.
Every time a piece of writing was overly complicated and I asked the author, aka a colleague, to explain it to me, I got a “what I meant to say was…”. What usually follows is a simple and easy to understand summary. My usual response is: “excellent, just write that”. Follow your instinct of how you would say it to another person in the room. Make it personal.
