Business language.

snakemanStoo

Sporky said:

I hear an awful lot of it; for some reason the one that annoys me most is "myself" instead of "me" and "yourself" instead of "you", which seems to be becoming very popular at work.

Most of the rest of these are just fashion, but those are downright bad grammar and make the person saying it sound like a right thicko, whereas they seem to think it's a longer word so will make them sound smarter.

Myself agrees with yourself.  

TheOtherDennis

I spent over 30 years having to not only understand all this stuff, but write it in a way that both made some sort of sense and sounded as attractive as possible. I was in marketing and advertising and stuff.

Due to domestic issues, I slowly started being unable to jump as instantly as my clients wanted, so they slowly started to drift off. In a panic at the subsequent fall in income (last year, I made less than I did in 1987), I turned back to the photographic career I'd abandoned 30 years before in order to concentrate on my writing.

As a result, I have not had to deal with any of this for almost a year now.

You have no idea how many nightmares this thread has revived.

Alongside a truly glorious relief that I am FUCKING AWAY FROM IT AT LAST!!!

Drew_TNBD

My company has a yurt. You're not allowed to talk when you're inside it.

TheOtherDennis

Sporky said:

... downright bad grammar and make the person saying it sound like a right thicko, whereas they seem to think it's a longer word so will make them sound smarter.

That's my problem with so much of that stuff. "I've been tasked with..." No, you've been asked to. But because the other one has more letters and thus sounds longer, as well as being ungrammatical (by turning a noun into a verb), it supposedly makes them sound smarter.

It doesn't, it really doesn't.

My biggest issue is with spelling. 'Til is not a word. It is not the short form of until. Till is the correct word, though that too is not the correct short form of until - because until is a longer form of the older word till.

I pointed this out to a client using a copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as documentary proof. When I saw that he'd subsequently used the incorrect version I qondered why. "I asked a couple of the girls in the office and they said it looked odd, so I changed it back."

:-S

I did the same with their spelling of focaccia on a menu. They spelled it foccacia. I bought an Italian/English dictionary to prove I was right. They told me not to be such a dick. When I pointed out that being that specific sort of dick was what they were paying me to be, they just hurrumphed and walked away.

I mean, what is the point of paying someone to spot mistakes and then ignoring them when they do what they're being paid for?

"Scientists say that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. I disagree. I think the most abundant element in the universe is stupidity." Frank Zappa.

historyisjunk

Dear @TheOtherDennis

Thanks for pointing out that this stuff has a serious side too. I feel your pain, both personally & vicariously through my other half who has a Plain English diploma & used to have to correct & translate this stuff. She too has been away from it for a while doing other less soul destroying work & often says she is so grateful not to be doing it anymore. People would frequently just not accept that this kind language was not clear or reasonable for communication beyond a small circle of those who could decode it. Her efforts often being rejected as “dumbing down” or because people like “the academic style”. She relates an incident where someone used the phrases flag up & bottom out in the same sentence- sore.

My personal dislike of it comes from lay union work and reading political writings. I can’t face digging up actual examples, but phrases like “right sizing”; “down sizing”; “over employing” are just euphemisms for redundancy and job losses. Everyone knows this, but somehow the phrases are supposed to de-personalise what’s going on or make it seem like there is some objective reason that any right thinking person would accept to justify it.

I don’t think people who use this terminology are necessarily “bad people” & it’s not a moral failing. For the most part I think people probably do it to fit in, possibly unconsciously because it's common currency in their world, or because they feel it makes what they’re saying more serious. I’ve probably done it in the past for this reason and my spelling is often shitt. There seems to be loads of this in academic writing too (at least in social theory). In fact, there seems to be a version of this in most areas- try descriptions of conceptual art or even captions on paintings. I suspect you could often swap them round & no one would notice.

In some cases though it is bad. I think it’s what the social theorist Jurgen Habermas calls distorted communication. It makes what’s being communicated opaque & exclusionary, so the average non-expert can’t argue back or engage in an equal dialogue. (Unfortunately Habermas is pretty hard to understand too, maybe it's partly translation).

It’s not new, Orwell identified it years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Language

Right, I’m off to find my pipe and slippers and my copy of Finnegan’s Wake

TheOtherDennis

I have every sympathy with your missus, @historyisjunk. I think sometimes they do have a moral failing, because they believe themselves to be superior because they use this sort of guff. (At least, a lot of the people I've worked with have had serious moral failings, but that may have been incidental to their use of language. )

Alnico

George Carlin

thecolourbox

We keep a list of these when encountered in day to day work. My favourites are:

The margin of the financing is around 350 basis points over three-month LIBOR, reflecting the granularity of the underlying UK property portfolio and macro concerns driving receding liquidity in financing markets since the end of the summer.

What’s been your biggest challenge or accomplishment in your career?            Rationalising the Client A portfolio after divesting of the AA and BB divisions and then shrinking the footprint and cost base by the introduction of new ways of working and more realistic occupation densities.

Passionate about marrying the dollars-and-cents business case with the human aspect of change management.

Ravenous

thecolourbox said:

What’s been your biggest challenge or accomplishment in your career?            Rationalising the Client A portfolio after divesting of the AA and BB divisions and then shrinking the footprint and cost base by the introduction of new ways of working and more realistic occupation densities.

Wow - that sounds like someone just fired a phuqload of people, and packed the survivors into a much smaller building... (Bloodbath.)

Reverend

so, going forward how do we prioritise the learnings? What I've found as I interface with many of the key stakeholders in the fretboard portfolio is how passionate you are about the importance of integrating our core messages into client-focused single point of reference that allows us to demonstrate our underlying mission.

stickyfiddle

thecolourbox said:

The margin of the financing is around 350 basis points over three-month LIBOR, reflecting the granularity of the underlying UK property portfolio and macro concerns driving receding liquidity in financing markets since the end of the summer.

I do financial stuff for a living and honestly I'm lost after LIBOR. WTF is the rest supposed to mean?! 

At our shop we do a lot of "reaching out" but not too much of the other shite. "Reimagine the possible" is a current buzzword though. Management are still clutching at straws trying to explain how it means anything other than "innovate".

monquixote

stickyfiddle said:

thecolourbox said:

The margin of the financing is around 350 basis points over three-month LIBOR, reflecting the granularity of the underlying UK property portfolio and macro concerns driving receding liquidity in financing markets since the end of the summer.

I do financial stuff for a living and honestly I'm lost after LIBOR. WTF is the rest supposed to mean?! 

At our shop we do a lot of "reaching out" but not too much of the other shite. "Reimagine the possible" is a current buzzword though. Management are still clutching at straws trying to explain how it means anything other than "innovate".

I imagine the guys who rigged LIBOR would say they were just reimagining the legal.

57Deluxe

RandallFlagg said:

Bellend

In the efforts of providing a more concise and comprehensive delivery of Pronoun variables, we should seek to adhere to classical definitions so as to not add confusion as to the application.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Parts_of_a_Bell.svg

So the correct term is Bellhead

fields5069

Somebody sent me an email threatening to "socialise" something with a "wider audience". I asked him nicely not to use socialise in that context. It's a slippery slope.

Jalapeno

All used by IBM in the last year -

Restructuring - redundancies
Resource Action - redundancies
Roll out our new operating model - redundancies (local) in favour of GD (India) resources (GD = Global Delivery - a euphemism for off-shoring)
New-collar workers - redundancies (of older people, probably illegal in EU & UK)
Focus on delivery centres - redundancies for anyone who isn't in or willing to relocate to one of 6 city centres (after 25yrs of promoting remote working)

Jalapeno

My fave, and one I use a lot in attempted irony is "that is likely to produce a sub-optimal outcome", meaning it will be a clusterf*ck of the first order.

Reverend

Jalapeno said:

All used by IBM in the last year -

Restructuring - redundancies
Resource Action - redundancies
Roll out our new operating model - redundancies (local) in favour of GD (India) resources (GD = Global Delivery - a euphemism for off-shoring)
New-collar workers - redundancies (of older people, probably illegal in EU & UK)
Focus on delivery centres - redundancies for anyone who isn't in or willing to relocate to one of 6 city centres (after 25yrs of promoting remote working)

And that would be why IBM are so good now.


oh wait...

Rocker

Reverend said:

so, going forward how do we prioritise the learnings? What I've found as I interface with many of the key stakeholders in the fretboard portfolio is how passionate you are about the importance of integrating our core messages into client-focused single point of reference that allows us to demonstrate our underlying mission.

Oh, you mean it needs a Bigsby......

BigLicks67

Sounds like a win-win, just let me cascade this to our other partners and then we can get together for a constructive mind shower, going forward.

Fretwired

Gulliver said:

I once heard somebody say 'I'll diarize that'  when they meant "I'll put that in my diary"

Cunt.

But diarize is a word in the OED that's been used for over 150 years.