CrazyEngineers
CrazyEngineers

  • Where Did Soul-Sucking Office-Speak Come From?

    Ramani Aswath

    Ramani Aswath

    @ramani-VR4O43
    Updated: Oct 22, 2024
    Views: 1.4K
    I am old and old fashioned. Language means precision in communication. Sir Ernest Gower's "Complete Plain Words" is a bible for me. Commercial, management and advertisement jargon makes me, a normal peace loving person, see red and search for a lethal weapon.

    I am not averse to modern usages. I have read with interest Edward De Bono's 'The De Bono Code Book' that tries to make certain aspects more precise and relevant to modern times.
    But the obfuscation often accompanied by inane, unnecessarily garnished Power Point Presentations gets my goat.

    A like minded friend and former colleague sent me this post, which struck a sympathetic chord.
    What is the take of CEans on this?

    #-Link-Snipped-#
    0
    Replies
Howdy guest!
Dear guest, you must be logged-in to participate on CrazyEngineers. We would love to have you as a member of our community. Consider creating an account or login.
Replies

  • Ankita Katdare

    Administrator • Dec 31, 2014

    Could relate 100% to the post. These days not one day passes in a corporate IT office without passing at least office-speak jargon in someone's face. As a fresher, I got 😲 to hear terms like marketecture, promulgating, incentivizing, recontextualization in normal presentations (that ideally shouldn't last more than 10 minutes, but usually extended into 1.5 hours.

    Quoting from the author's post :

    Let's consider the following, which is the first paragraph from a real email I have received:

    I've started thinking about our direction of travel under a number of key areas, keeping in mind that our long term ambitions could really be articulated around increasing reach, engagement, income and, importantly, impact through creative, compelling, resonant articulation of our work.

    Have any thoughts formed in your head after reading that? I doubt it. I know the context of this email. I know who wrote it and why they wrote it and when they wrote it. But reading it now, over and over again, no thoughts arrive in my head. None.
    This is what happened to us. Nobody had a clue what 'action' needed to be taken immediately after reading the mail. Read and re-read it.

    At CE, we strongly believe that using simple words for communication via phone calls, emails, voice articles or just in-person has to be a norm. More work gets done if we speak in local language and faster.
    Are you sure? This action cannot be undone.
    Cancel
Home Channels Search Login Register