Jargon sends me round the U-bend

What is it with companies and jargon? Why do they feel the need to invent words that actually obscure what they are trying to say? I came across a beauty the other day made all the more amusing by its context.

A friend of mine has signed up as a mystery shopper with a couple of market research agencies. It's actually a great way of making a little (and I do mean a little) extra money if you are out and about anyway.

However, the potential assignment that landed in my friend's inbox recently had her wondering just what had happened to her brilliant career. It also sparked off a string of amusing, if somewhat childish, emails.

The research company admitted in the first line they were struggling to get takers for this assignment and went on:
"The calls involve merchandising and auditing toilet seat displays of varying sizes within a well know DIY outlet." Wonder why no-one had volunteered? Could it be that the job itself was just too ridiculous? Or could it be that the description was just plain mystifying? -

"Visiting a major DIY outlet you will work to re-planogram a toilet seat display fixture, add new products and remove a de-listed product from the display for collection at a later date by a 3rd party."

Work to re-planogram? For goodness sake. Definately a case of flushing communication down the pan methinks.

You can find out more about mystery shopping from GfK.com and about taking part in paid online surveys from moneymagpie.co.uk.

My other half and I haven't spoken much all weekend. The dark circles under his eyes mark a lack of sleep and I'm sure I don't look much better. We're both tired and haven't eaten much since Friday night. I glance at him from time to time, sitting there hunched and tense on his sofa. It's a situation that's unlikely to ease for the next couple of days.

We haven't argued. In fact, things are just fine. It's just that since 1am on Saturday morning when we got home each armed with a copy of the last Harry Potter, we've both been totally immersed in a world of wizards and witches. If only we could master summoning charms we wouldn't have to leave our sofas to get food and drink.

As always when reading HP I'm convinced I should be able to work a little magic and cast a few spells. It's so disappointing to find I can't. JK Rowling definitely can though. I'm tired of the smug detractors who rush to criticise the books as though they feel it's an obligation. It's fabulous to see young and old queuing to get their hands on the first copies and seeing people on buses and trains lost in a world of make-believe. How often does a book get such a reaction?

Anyway, I'm wasting valuable reading time here so I'm going to apparate to somewhere quiet to get on with it.

Lost in translation

I find it weird the way some people adopt the written version of a 'telephone voice' when they write business emails and letters. Not only do they sound pompous and staid but they can also be pretty difficult to follow.

I've just run three training sessions on improving business writing. I was nervous anyway but the pressure was really on because two of the sessions were with people who don't have English as a first language.

I had to think twice as hard about how to communicate and I think that's a really good thing. It's easy just to dash off a memo or letter without stopping to think about what we are trying to say or who we are talking to.

I took some real-life examples of how not to write to the sessions. They caused both giggles and furrowed brows. The reason? Well, they were written in that bizarre kind of way I mentioned at the beginning.

We don't speak that way in normal, every day conversations, so why chose a totally alien voice when we want to communicate something important? Surely the idea is to be clear so our message is understood? As my group proved, staid, stuffy language can actually obscure the meaning.

The examples I used are sprinkled such arcane gems as beverages, ascertain, pertaining to, prudent, deemed necessary, my personal favourite - egress, and oh so many others. Most of the sentences are passive which also gets in the way of clarity and each is written in one big block of off-putting text.

I knew the examples were bad but I didn't appreciate just how impenetrable they could actually be for people who aren't native English speakers. And their English was excellent by the way.

I found a really good book when I was putting the session materials together - Read this! business writing that works by Robert Gentle.
It has some excellent information and is written in a way that practices what it preaches. I also love Why business people speak like idiots by Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway & Jon Warshawsky.

Among the horrifying examples of business-speak it covers is a genuinely disturbing PowerPoint slide. The authors claim it could actually represent the first real instance of 'death by PowerPoint'.

Hello, this is me

Hi I’m Elaine Swift and I’m a freelance copywriter. It’s taken me around two years to start blogging but here I am .

I the stuff I write for clients is usually for their marketing materials - websites, brochures, newsletters etc. But I also want to write about the things that interest me and to hear from people who share those interests.

So this is me:

I'd been with the same company for 18 years and one day, standing on a Cornish cliff-top, surrounded by some of the most immense, inspiring landscape in the country, the penny dropped. I was in the wrong job. (I've always been a bit of a late developer ...)

I was head of press and pr for the OK office of a well-known camera brand but all I really enjoyed about it was the writing. However, there's a limit to how many times you can get away with 'Flash of Inspiration' when writing about camera products, and I'd reached it.

I realised I’d lost myself somewhere between leaving art school and becoming part of a corporation. On the last day of the holiday we drove across country and down the opposite coast to Portscatho. We'd seen a shop called the Sea Garden in a magazine and decided to take a look. Of course it was just a desperate attempt to stave off coming back. The shop was closed by the way. It sort of confirmed that I had to sort myself out, and soon.

A couple of weeks later I took a leap of faith and resigned.I’m so glad I did. I’ve met some really inspirational people in the last four years and I’m doing things I never thought I'd have the confidence to do.

I'm no longer stuck in one sector as I write for a wide variety of clients. One minute I'm writing about beauty treatments and the next, construction - and I love that. I get to work with people I like, both as clients and colleagues. There's no back-biting, game playing or office politics, although I do scream and shout at my PC and at myself quite a lot. That always used to cause alarm in the office for some reason.

Yes, it's worrying when I'm about to finish a project and there's nothing immediate on the horizon but at least I get rewarded, recognition and respect for my work now. And I get to wage my war on those insidious invaders of business communications - jargon, buzz-words and lack of clarity.

I've just opened the instructions to a new asthma inhaler. Apparently, 'when a red mark first appears in the indicator window, there are approximately 20 actuations left. So that would be doses would it? And that's probably another entry in itself.