Word Fanatic

I hit my thumb with a local impact generator

 Some people can't (won't/don't)  say what they mean.  They use a weird, roundabout puzzlespeak to convey their fuzzy meaning. Sometimes it's deliberate. When a defense contractor calls a hammer a local impact generator, it's probably because he wants to justify charging several thousand dollars for it. 

But sometimes,  it's just the way certain pompous individuals communicate -- and it seems far more common when writing than when speaking. (Mercifully, otherwise conversation would be impossible.) Consider the following:

It has been planned and built into the financial model, that the systemic objectives of the highest priority are appropriated with the largest investments. 

 What the heck does that mean? Actually, if you stop to study the sentence, you may arrive at something like this:

High-priority objectives have been allocated the largest budgets.

So why didn't the writer just say so? Probably because he was in a hurry, and he knew what he meant (kind of...) and so he just vomited a heap of important-sounding words onto the page and moved on, leaving readers to make sense of the mess. 

Reading even a sentence or two of this stuff is painful.  Reading a page or a whole report is unthinkable.  Most of us would rather hit our thumbs repeatedly with a local impact generator.

 

 

So what? Who cares?

Introducing the two questions readers ask  (maybe subconsciously), every time they look at a wall of print and wonder whether it’s worth the climb.

Let's face it -- no-one bothers to read something they think is irrelevant. Readers  (listeners, viewers) have a life. They prioritize. If they can save time  by not reading something marginally relevant, they will.
 

Click click, see ya later 

 Do they care about your message? Is it exciting or truly important TO THEM? Is it worth reading just a little further, spending another few seconds of precious time on? Or is it clearly and totally so what? If so – click click, see ya later. It’s an obvious point – but one that is constantly overlooked by would-be communicators.

It's not about the writer
It's all about what readers want or need to know. Self evident? Yes, but how often have we  read something that begins:

We want to tell you…

...or……

We’re proud to announce……

Guess what?  Readers don't care what the writer WANTS to tell them. They care about information that is useful, relevant, entertaining -- to them. They read things that offer them value. If they invest their  precious time, they'd better get something in return.

The moral for writers
Ask the two crucial questions before putting pen to paper or pixel to screen. Then answer them. Then create a piece of writing that gets across your message while adding value for readers. It can usually be done, with thought and care and often a dose of humour. But banging out a message without answering these questions? Usually a waste of time and mental energy for all concerned.