{"id":13584,"date":"2016-02-05T09:12:26","date_gmt":"2016-02-05T13:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wyliecomm.com\/?page_id=13584"},"modified":"2024-01-01T08:29:38","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T12:29:38","slug":"business-jargon","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.wyliecomm.com\/writing-tips\/what-is-readability\/how-to-avoid-jargon\/business-jargon\/","title":{"rendered":"Quotes on how to avoid business jargon"},"content":{"rendered":"

What writers and others say<\/h2>\n

\"Business

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\u201cThere’s nothing quite like Latin for disguising the fact that you’re making it up as you go along.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Ben Aaronovitch, British author<\/h6>\n
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“After days and weeks and years of editing this junk so that even a caveman can understand it, I end up thinking that all writers are dead and left no sons.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Peter Adomeit, law professor, on translating legalese into English<\/h6>\n
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\u201cOurs is the age of substitutes: Instead of language we have jargon; instead of principles, slogans; and instead of genuine ideas, bright suggestions.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Eric Bentley, British-born American playwright<\/h6>\n
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“relanguage. Term used by $300-an-hour consultants when $1 words, such as reword, rephrase or rewrite, would work just as well. ‘I think we can relanguage that to be more effective.'”<\/h5>\n
\u2014BuzzWhack<\/h6>\n
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“Bad terminology is the enemy of good thinking. When companies or investment professionals use terms such as ‘EBITDA’ and ‘pro forma,’ they want you to unthinkingly accept concepts that are dangerously flawed.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Warren Buffett, CEO, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Plain English Handbook<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Dump the technospeak. Nobody understands it.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Joyce Bustinduy, global publisher, Levi Strauss & Company<\/h6>\n
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“Please don’t write to me about solutions any more \u2014 they have become a problem.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Rob Calem, editor of The<\/em> Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition,<\/em> quoted on Jargon-Free Web<\/h6>\n
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\u201cJargon: any technical language we do not understand.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Mason Cooley, American wit<\/h6>\n
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\u201cJargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Roger Ebert, film critic, Chicago Sun-Times<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cIf you can\u2019t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Albert Einstein, the father of modern physics<\/h6>\n
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“When people don’t understand the material, they tend to go more with the original, often too-technical and undigested information from a primary source. A writer who really understands the information can translate it accurately into lay language.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Neita F. Geilker, Ph.D., aka The Grammar Guru<\/h6>\n
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“I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you’ve probably misunderstood what I’ve said.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman<\/h6>\n
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“Never impose your language on people you wish to reach.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Abbie Hoffman, U.S. social and political activist, founder of the Youth International Party, or yippies<\/h6>\n
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“IABC Gold Quill entry: ‘Our challenge was to design and implement a multi-faceted customer experience initiative supported by a change-management strategy.’<\/h5>\n
“Judge’s comment: ‘Someone graduated with honors from buzzword college.'”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 International Association of Business Communications Gold Quill awards<\/h6>\n
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“‘We don’t call them tattoos<\/em> any more,’ said Richard Teerlink, chairman of Harley-Davidson, as the screen behind him showed a bicep emblazoned with what he called a ‘dermatological graphic’ of the Milwaukee motorcycle maker’s familiar symbol.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 The Wisconsin State Journal<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Words matter. It\u2019s time to stop prettifying the ugly stuff. Spousal abuse<\/em> means wife beating. Global warming<\/em> means the Earth is toast. Enhanced interrogation<\/em> means torture. And here\u2019s a bit of trivia for you: The Bush administration did not coin the phrase enhanced interrogation<\/em>. Nor did it come from Jack Bauer on 24. Nope, it was the Gestapo that originated the little bon mot back in 1937.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Lisa Kogan, columnist, in “Lisa Kogan Tells All,” O<\/em> magazine, March 2008<\/h6>\n
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“Psychiatrist to patient on the couch: “O.K. What part of ‘malignant regression and pathogenic reintrojection as a defense against psychic decompensation’ don’t you understand?”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Bob Mankoff cartoon in The New Yorker<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cNever use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 George Orwell, author whose work focused on the deception of political language<\/h6>\n
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“Jargon allows us to camouflage intellectual poverty with verbal extravagance.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 David Pratt, foreign editor for the Sunday Herald<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cJargon is a sure sign that intelligence has lost its way.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Marty Rubin, author, The Boiled Frog Syndrome<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Marketers don’t understand buyers, the problems buyers face, or how their product helps solve these problems. That’s where the gobbledygook happens \u2026 When you write, start with your buyers, not with your product.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 David Meerman Scott, author of Cashing In With Content<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“[Unfamiliar acronyms] create false economies. They may save a few words, but they may also frustrate and force the reader to take more time and effort to understand the document.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 The SEC’s A Plain English Handbook<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Use defined words sparingly. Don’t let a shortcut for the writer become a roadblock for the reader.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 The SEC’s Plain English Handbook<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“There are 100 different special languages out there, and you must translate them into English. Does the reporter write medical Japanese like fractured metatarsal? Or did he translate that into plain English — broken foot? Legal German like stay the writ, instead of delay the order? Do your cops apprehend a perpetrator or catch a robber? Edit in your language, the words you talk with, not their jargon. Make the reporter translate it while he is getting the story.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Clarke Stallworth, veteran journalist with the Birmingham Post-Herald<\/em> and The Birmingham News<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“I work with people who honestly believe that he who dies with the most acronyms wins.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 State Farm administrator<\/h6>\n
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“Don’t write merely to be understood. Write so that you cannot possibly be misunderstood.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish writer<\/h6>\n
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“While intelligent people can often simplify the complex, a fool is more likely to complicate the simple.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Henry David Thoreau, American author and philosopher<\/h6>\n
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“I looked through job ads that made no sense. My favorites were from the consulting firms: ‘You will learn to implement strategic management protocol decisions,’ et cetera. I worried that I would turn into some sort of cyborg after three weeks at one of these places; I would return home for my first Thanksgiving and communicate via streams of ticker tape issuing from my mouth.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Paul Tomm, a young journalist, in Jon Fasman\u2019s novel, The Geographer’s Library<\/h6>\n
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“From time to time, I am cruelly slandered by members of the public relations industry, who accuse me of writing unfairly about their profession. Nothing could be further from the truth. I love PR professionals. They’re a hoot, because they are such pathetic, desperate dillweeds.”<\/h5>\n
“I am right now looking at something called Your Market Wire Newsletter,<\/em> a package of financial ‘news’ that arrives, unbidden, in journalists’ inboxes every week. It is filled with incomprehensibly written press releases on subjects of even less interest than can be found in a non-interest-bearing fiduciary debenture with negative yield. That’s exactly how these releases read, only they are less scintillating and more crammed with jargon. One word never suffices when 16 can do the job; big, important-sounding words are better than small, clear ones. Plans are ‘initiatives.’ They are not begun; they are ‘implemented.’ These releases could sedate an enraged rhinoceros.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Gene Weingarten, humor columnist, the Washington<\/em> Post Magazine<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“The bosses love jargon. They’ll load up on words they’ve just discovered, like ‘paradigm’ and ‘synergy.’ Then, when they’re really feeling frisky, they’ll use all their new toys in one sentence, along with some of the old standbys, as in: ‘We have implemented a new paradigm that will facilitate greater synergy among our stakeholders.'”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Jim Ylisela, editorial director, Lawrence Ragan Communications, Inc.<\/h6>\n
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\u201cNoise is the typographical error and the poorly designed page…Ambiguity is noise. Redundancy is noise. Misuse of words is noise. Vagueness is noise. Jargon is noise.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well<\/em><\/h6>\n
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