Gobbledygook and Jargon

"Gobbledygook" consists of ponderous words and phrases that obscure simple ideas. For example, to the user of gobbledygook, things don't get "finished", they get "finalized". Events didn't happen "then", they happened "at that point in time". The child isn't "failing" but rather is "motivationally deprived".

"Jargon" consists of words that are known almost exclusively to insiders. Some examples: A "four on the floor" is a four-speed hand-shifted automobile transmission. A "no show" is a person who fails to use a ticket for an event or a trip.

Gobbledygook and jargon are often seen in news releases about high-tech prod­ucts, giving the uninitiated reader a baffling message.

 

Poor Sentence Structure

The subject and the words that modify it often become separated in a sentence, causing some confusion as to what exactly is being discussed. Here are some examples from actual news releases:

The proposed budget provides salary increases for faculty and staff performing at a satisfactory level of two percent.

The New Mexico Women's Correctional Facility in Grants is scheduling a Christ­mas party for children and grandchildren of inmates under 15.

 

Wrong Words

A good dictionary serves not only to check spelling but also to verify the meaning of a word.

An Associated Press (AP) story once told about a man who had inherited a small scenic railroad from his "descendants", who had started it in the nineteenth century. The writer meant "ancestors" but used the wrong word. A government publication also used the wrong word when it reported, "Colonel Kit Carson's military campaign result­ed in the interment of 9,000 Navajo and Apache Indians". "Interment" means burial; the writer probably meant to say "internment", which means detention or confinement.

More common mistakes involve the usage of "it's" and "its", "effect" and "affect", "there" and "their", and "presume" and "assume". Other frequently confused words are listed in the next section. When in doubt, take the time to use the dictionary. It will save you embarrassment later.

 

"Sound-alike" Words                                           

Many words sound alike and are similar in spelling but have very different mean­ings. Although it may be somewhat humorous to read that a survey is "chalk full" of information (instead of " chock-full"), a company's management team is doing some "sole" searching (instead of "soul searching"), or an employee was in a "comma" (in­stead of a "coma") after a car accident, such mistakes are the mark of a careless writer.

A spell-checking program for your personal computer is extremely efficient at catching misspelled words but often can't catch homonyms because they are correctly spelled words. It is therefore important always to proofread your copy even after it has been corrected by a spell-checker program.

Here is a list of words that are frequently confused:

adapt, adopt        incredible, incredulous

appraise, apprise    negligent, negligible

canvas, canvass     peak, peek

comprise, compose pore, pour

continual, continuous principal, principle

ensure, insure       rebut, refute

fortunate, fortuitous shoe, shoo

imply, infer         stationary, stationery

This list is far from complete. There are many other words that sound alike or almost alike but have different spellings and meanings.

 

Redundancies

Another gross error in writing is the use of redundant words. It is not necessary to use the word "totally" to modify a word like "destroyed" or "completely" to modify "demolished". A lot of writers also say that something is "somewhat" or "very" unique. "Unique", by definition, means one of a kind; either something is unique or it isn't.

 

Too Many Words

Like redundancies, excessive words impede understanding and readability. Here are two examples of "overstuffed sentences" and their remedied versions:

BLOATED SENTENCE: Studying advertising research findings leads one to believe that the most important factors in effectiveness are the quality of creative work and the readers' interest in the message.

REVISED SENTENCE: Research indicates that the most effective ads are creative and appeal to readers' interests.

BLOATED SENTENCE: Should you have the occasion to know of someone whose background configuration approximates the position spec­ifications above, we would welcome a recommendation from you or directly from the exploring individual.

REVISED SENTENCE: If you know of someone who qualifies for this job, please let us know or have the person contact us.

 

Too Many Numbers

People can digest a few figures but not a mass of statistics. Use numbers sparingly in your writing, and keep in mind the following points:

— It is better to write "$92 million" than "92,000,000 dollars".

— It is better to give a readily understood comparison than a massive number. For example, you could say that 500 million pounds of garbage are produced in the United States every day, but it would be more effective to express that as 10 pounds per citizen.

¨ Check your math. The price of something can go up more than 100 percent, but it can never go down more than 100 percent.

 

Too Many Capitals

Try to avoid overcapitalization. Instead of writing,say, “Consolidated Edison Rate Advisory Board” you’d better present “Co Ed’s rate advisory board”.

 

Hype

You can ruin the credibility and believability of your message by using exaggerated words and phrases. Companies often describe their products as "first of its kind", "unique", and even "revolutionary", which tends to raise suspicion among media gate­keepers as well as readers.

The following words are often overused: leading, enhanced, unique, significant, solution, integrated, powerful, innovative, advanced, high-performance, and sophisti­cated.

 

Bias

Avoid gender bias by using non-gender-related words. Awareness of the irrele­vance of an employee's gender is why airlines now have "flight attendants" instead of "stewardesses" and why the postal service hires "mail carriers" instead of "mailmen". It also is unnecessary to write that something is "man-made" when a neutral word like 'synthetic" or "artificial" is just as good. "Employees" is better than "manpower", and "chairperson" is more acceptable than "chairman". Some terms may seem difficult to neutralize — "congressperson", "business person", and "waitperson" don't exactly trip off the tongue. However, with a little thought, you can come up with appropriate titles, such as " legislator", "executive", and "server".

The problem of avoiding gender bias is particularly difficult because much of our language is geared to the use of the word "man" as a generic term for both males and females. Attempts to avoid this lead to such usages as "he/she" or "his/her" that make for difficult reading. However, another word can be used in most cases. If you pluralize the noun in question/the pronoun "their" will serve nicely. In other cases, you can use words such as "personnel", "staff', "employee", "worker", "person", or "practitioner" to describe both men and women in the workplace.