The Right Language for Business

Poor English is probably one of the most powerful and least suspected causes of lost business. If it could be measured, the scale of the losses would be frightening.

Consider your own reaction to the often hilarious signs and notices you encounter abroad in hotels, brochures and shop windows. A card in the window of a Hong Kong tailor says, “Ladies may have a fit upstairs”, while a hotel in Paris advises you to “Leave your values at the front desk”. A sign in a foreign dry cleaners reads, “Ladies, leave your clothes here and have a good time”.

Such errors are not confined to small businesses. Even multi-national corporations can make expensive mistakes with language. Pepsi Cola’s first venture into China suffered from the direct translation of their regular slogan, “Come alive with Pepsi”. In Chinese it came out as “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave”. Similarly, the whiskey liqueur, Irish Mist, failed to appeal to German drinkers, because Mist is German slang for something unpleasant.

Beyond these glaring cross-cultural howlers, there are many grammatical and other errors regularly made by UK businesses in their dealings with their English speaking markets. There are also examples of language that might seem clear to the writer, but not to most of us. Have you ever read the instructions for filling out a tax return or some other official document? The individual words may be familiar, but the way they are combined may leave you gasping for air.

It does a business like yours no good at all to use language in this way. Because English is the language of business, if you use it badly you will lose out. So let me briefly illustrate some of the ways in which language gets in the way of good communication, and offer you some simple solutions.

Common errors

One of the most common errors in letters goes like this: “As a valued customer, we would like to make you an offer.” I understand the intention, but the way it is written suggests that the valued customer is the writer. Here are two alternative ways to express the same idea correctly:
1. As a valued customer, you are entitled to a special offer.
2. Because you are a valued customer, I’d like to make you an offer.

Another error from the same stable is “between you and I” or some version of that. For example, “It appeals to you and I” should be “It appeals to you and me”. When you reverse the words You and I, or when you leave out You altogether, you can hear how wrong it sounds to say “It appeals to I”.

Speaking in riddles

A newspaper astrologer whose Horoscopes appear in the newspapers of more than one country, recently wrote this: The problems you’re currently facing are aggravating. And they promise to become more complicated this week. Still, they’re no surprise. Ironically their increased severity both acts as a spur to tackle these head on and get those who’re equally involved in finding a solution.

I must confess I had to read it a few times before I properly understood what was meant.

The English have a tendency to speak and write in metaphors, which are not always understood by those from other countries. A piece in The Guardian about Jonny Wilkinson had this: “He seems perpetually to glow. It’s as though Jonny is perpetually bathed in the golden light of a late summer afternoon.” It’s attractive and poetic, and fine in some contexts, but worth avoiding in business.

Another source of confusion is the use of negatives. An American company was negotiating a textile deal with a Japanese firm. Towards the end of the negotiations, the Japanese chief negotiator brought his team to run through a check list of agreements with his American counterpart. As he raised each point, the American answered, “No problem.”

The Japanese negotiator became increasingly tense and eventually closed his notebook, stood up and left the room. Aghast, the American said, “What happened? Why did he leave?” The Japanese No. 2 said, “We are very disappointed that all the points we had agreed are now not agreed.”

The American had said “(There is) no problem”, but the Japanese had heard, “No. (There is a) problem.” That’s the danger of using a negative form of words to express a positive idea.

Globish

Jean-Paul Nerriere, a retired vice president of IBM in the United States, has come up with a simplified form of business English. He intended it for use in international dealings, but it could have value in Britain as well. He calls it Globish.

According to his research, there could be as many as 615,000 words in the English language, but he noticed that foreigners using English did so in a simple way, using very few words. A Korean and a German might converse in a form of English that you might find hard to follow, but they manage to understand each other. About one billion people (one sixth of the world’s population) is now using some non-standard or non-Anglo-American form of English. In fact, some 80% of the world’s home pages on the internet use “some kind of English”.

Nerriere formalised it as Globish, based on a vocabulary of just 1,500 words, short sentences and an absence of idiomatic expressions.

Self important language

Even while Globish and texting are simplifying language, official organisations are still using language that is both old-fashioned and self important. A job ad in The Times has this:

Over the past two years we have turned our business around and restored it to a sound financial and operational position, investing in our infrastructure and people, and greatly improving the service experience of … customers.

Service experience?

Another ad in the same paper has this:

The Council is the CC’s strategic management Board, responsible for establishing the overall strategic direction of the Commission, as well as ensuring high standards of governance and efficient discharge of the CC’s statutory functions.

With a little effort it is possible to work out what is meant, but why does it have to use language that is not immediately clear?

Here’s a simple rule of thumb for anything you are writing: let the reader understand what it’s about in 3 seconds or less.

Emails

Consider how you treat emails. How do you decide whether to read or discard the many emails that flood into your Inbox every day?

Typically, I get about 300 a day. And because I am out and about, I also receive them on my Blackberry. I cannot afford much time to go through emails and vet them, so I check and clear several times a day. Most emails get about one second of my time before they are deleted. Who sent it, and what is it about? That’s all I need to know before I read or delete it.

Now, what if one of those emails came from you?

On my Blackberry the subject line is very short, so the first TWO WORDS must be attractive. If I then open the email, I want to know immediately what it’s about. I look for three things:
1. the full subject line (is it spam?)
2. how I am addressed (got my name right?)
3. the opening sentence (what’s the offer?)

Three things in three seconds. Only then will I consider reading the email. And even then I skim read. So it is vitally important to get to the point.

Leonard Bernstein wrote the music for My Fair Lady. At the height of his fame, a young man approached him with an idea for a new musical. “Write it on the back of your business card,” said Bernstein. The young man protested, “I couldn’t possibly fit it on the back of my card!”

“Then,” said Bernstein, “it isn’t ready.” So get to the point quickly.

Jargon

The use of jargon is guaranteed to turn off and even antagonise people. Often it is used to indicate “I am on the inside track. I am in the know.” It’s an attitude that conflicts with the purpose of communication.

Jargon is not only the use of specialist terms (which sometimes cannot be avoided), but also the use of certain standard phrases that are mistaken for business English. Here’s an example I picked up from another article on clear communication:

“Moving forwards, we at Virgin Trains are looking to take ownership of the flow in question to apply our pricing structure, thus resulting in this journey search appearing in the new category-matrix format … I hope this makes the situation clear.”

Clear? Not bloomin’ likely! I don’t know if it actually came from a Virgin Trains document, but it’s a fine example of the kind of language to avoid.

Finally …

It’s always better to say or write something, than to remain silent. But remember that you will be judged by a critical audience. So write as you would speak to someone you respect. And then get a good writer to cast an eye over it and correct the most glaring errors.

Be direct, get to the point early, and don’t let anything get in the way of your enthusiasm.