Illustrating the issue with verbosity

Published 2nd April 2024
in Thoughts on writing

I saw this advert for the consultancy company S-RM the other day and had to share it with you.

It says:

The utilisation of corporate language is increasingly prevalent in the field of advisory organisations endeavouring to communicate an impression of intelligence, insight and expertise. But these megabytes of meaningless meandering obscure anything incisive and helpful. Coupled with exponential potential for incremental cost increases, in both the time expended to formulate such presentations and the time spent analysing and decoding, render them ineffective.

Which is why we get paid for the intelligence, not the word count.

I love the way it highlights the problem with corporate jargon while simultaneously setting S-RM apart from its competitors who use this kind of language.

I’ve written a lot about corporate jargon in the past, both to defend it and to bemoan it. (We may love to hate it, but it’s so easy to slip into using it!)

If you’d like to read a defence of it, try In defence of jargon and corporate gibberish.

If you’d like to read me arguing against it, try Why we use business buzzwords.

And do let me know what you think of corporate jargon. Do you studiously avoid it? Or do you find yourself slipping into it even when you don’t want to?

Share this article
Catherine Every

Catherine Every is a writer and a writing skills trainer. She helps healthcare and public sector organisations as well as tech and professional services businesses to create better written communications. You can read the full story here.

Catherine Every, copywriter and writing skills trainer

Stay in touch

If you’d like to hear from me regularly, you can subscribe to my monthly email newsletter.

(To see how I manage your data, see the Privacy policy. And rest assured, I’ll never share your details with anyone.)