How to write normally

Journalist Tim Phillips is the author of Talk Normal: Stop the Business Speak Jargon and Waffle. He says:

Number one: try to be understood by everybody you’re speaking to. One of the things about jargon is that we get a lot of pleasure out of it because it puts us in the “in” group, the people who understand the jargon. But we have a responsibility to the people in the “out” group, the people who don't understand the jargon, as well. So try to be understood by everyone you’re speaking to. 

The second principle is stop trying to sound clever if sounding clever doesn’t get you anywhere. Anyone can explain the difficult things so that it sounds like they’re difficult. It really takes insight to take something that’s complex and make it sound simple for people to create understanding. And really, that’s what we should be doing with language. 

The third principle is that it’s about attitude; it’s not about rules. I make jargon mistakes and grammar mistakes all the time. All journalists do. Fortunately, we have people who work as copy editors to fix those for us. If we get hung up on the rules, we’ll lose sight of what we’re here to do, which is to communicate with each other and be understood.

Eschew obfuscation.

What (the right) words can do

(Thanks, Pat)

You can read this, or you can set your house on fire

A false choice is a type of logical fallacy that involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are additional options. It is also called a false dilemma, a false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy, fallacy of false choice, black and white thinking or the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses.

Look for this when politicians are speaking. Ruth Marcus notes:

As a rhetorical device, particularly as a political rhetorical device, the false choice has outlived its usefulness, if it ever had any. The phrase has become a trite substitute for serious thinking. It serves too often to obscure rather than to explain. 

The false-choice dodge takes three overlapping forms. The first, a particular Obama specialty, is the false false choice. Set up two unacceptable extremes that no one is seriously advocating and position yourself as the champion of the reasonable middle ground between these unidentified straw men.

Thus, Obama on health care, stretching back to the presidential campaign: "I reject the tired old debate that says we have to choose between two extremes: government-run health care with higher taxes - or insurance companies without rules denying people coverage," he said in 2008. "That's a false choice." It's also a choice that no one - certainly no other politician - was proposing.

Or Obama on financial reform: "We need not choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy. That is a false choice that will not serve our people or any people." Again, please find me the advocate of either extreme.

Another thing to look for when politicians are speaking: if their mouths are moving, they're lying.

What people believe

People don't believe what you tell them.

They rarely believe what you show them.

They often believe what their friends tell them.

They always believe what they tell themselves.

-- Seth Godin

The oratory of leadership

"Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.' "--Winston Churchill on Germany, June 18, 1940

"I don't have a crystal ball. I think that right now the debate surrounding Afghanistan is presented as either we get up and leave immediately because there's no chance at a positive outcome, or we stay basically indefinitely and do quote unquote whatever it takes for as long as it takes."--Barack Obama on Afghanistan, June 27, 2010

(Wall Street Journal)

How to get your message heard

Jack Trout, a renowned marketing guru:

"The best way to really enter minds that hate complexity and confusion is to oversimplify your message. The lesson here is not to try to tell your entire story. Just focus on one powerful differentiating idea and drive it into the mind. 

"That sudden hunch, that creative leap of the mind that "sees" in a flash how to solve a problem in a simple way, is something quite different from general intelligence. If there's any trick to finding that simple set of words, it's one of being ruthless about how you edit the story you want to tell. Anything that others could claim just as well as you can, eliminate. 

"Anything that requires a complex analysis to prove, forget. Anything that doesn't fit with your customers' perceptions, avoid." 

(American Digest)

Communicating with your idiot boss

Scott Herrick at Cube Rules, a job-advice blog, points out three mistakes we all make when reporting in to that lump in the corner office.

Explaining your entire thought process without a decision request

Remember the writing rule that says the first sentence of your paragraph should explain what is coming in the rest of the paragraph? Same situation here. Managers are used to making decisions, so tell your manager up front what you are requesting. Once you say what you are expecting, you can then go through the reasons why and your supervisor will know where you are headed. The longer it takes for you to put out your request, the more your supervisor will try and figure out what you want instead of listening to what you are saying.

Failing to prototype your work

Ever had your supervisor give you a small project with a due date out a couple of weeks? How many times have you taken that project, thought you understood the deliverable, then presented your work on the due date and were told it was all wrong?

It happens all the time. The higher up you go in the organization, the more likely it is to happen — because no one wants to bother the mucky-muck, but to deliver.

When you get a project, take one point and follow it through to the end. Then, after completing this in a couple of days — about 5-10% of the total project, show your work to your manager. Now you will discover all the hidden requirements your manager assumed you knew when you said yes to the project. Now you will find the right level of detail. Now you will find if you are writing for the right audience. Now you will find if you are using the right delivery tool for the work.

Providing activities in status reports instead of accomplishments

In bigger corporations, status reports are common. Most managers don’t tell you what they want in them or, if they do, they focus on activities, not accomplishments. Don’t fall for this trap.

Your accomplishments are your results that can get included in your performance review. Or your resume. Your accomplishments become the stories you tell your hiring manager for your next gig. Even if your manager wants to know that you attended twenty meetings last week, put in the twenty meetings but also include what you accomplished as a result of the meetings.

Three ways to persuade people

Aristotle identified three modes of persuasion in his Rhetoric, which I consider as relevant today as in his time for anyone seeking to move someone else to his point of view. Do you take these three forms of persuasion into account? Here's what he wrote:

Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself. 

Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided. This kind of persuasion, like the others, should be achieved by what the speaker says, not by what people think of his character before he begins to speak. 

It is not true, as some writers assume in their treatises on rhetoric, that the personal goodness revealed by the speaker contributes nothing to his power of persuasion; on the contrary, his character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion he possesses. 

Secondly, persuasion may come through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions. Our judgements when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile. It is towards producing these effects, as we maintain, that present-day writers on rhetoric direct the whole of their efforts. This subject shall be treated in detail when we come to speak of the emotions. 

Thirdly, persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question.

Maybe I should think about this when I want the boy to take out the garbage.