In my job, I look at techy documents all day. I would be given a technical proposal by IT consultants that is 90 pages single spaced, full of jargon and acronyms and asked to format, edit, proofread, etc. as just part of what I do. Besides the little errors in grammar, punctuation, spelling, we go deep on these and I hack them up pretty good.
Some of this stuff is ridiculously tedious...and everyone thinks they are a writer, and the wordier the better...GAG! And at the place I worked previously it was for an AFB, so gov't guys are checking this stuff out - and they aren't looking for fancy!
I'm all about the streamline sentence and I just wanted to throw a couple of these out here for you and see if you have some others. Keep in mind the people who read the acronym-laden document have a lot of other proposals to read as well, and typically the money man isn't the technical one who can understand it. It HAS to be clear and concise or they won't bother.
They make it 15 extra pages just to make it fancy. One even likes to ask a rhetorical question in the middle of a technical proposal. They don't want to guess! they want you to tell them how you will fix their problem.
The sentence structures are excruciating when it is all technical jargon...so I rearrange them, and of course leave tracking changes on so they can see what I did...I have sent many a techie away in tears.
so here's my vent! I want them all to know:
More words are NOT better writing! They are so unbelievable offended by taking away the meaningless fluff and making it read straight. The stuff is hard enough to understand as it is, then you add useless prep. phrases where one word would do. Rearrange sentence structure for variety, and confuse the crap out of the reader, by the time they get to the end of the sentence they have no idea what was just said.
Point A's with no point B to follow it, starting a sentence with "First" and not having a "second". Saying finally when you never had a first or second. Completely passive sentences beginning with "there are", Massive run on sentences that at closer inspection don't even have a verb. I had one techie that started about every 4th sentence with "However," and some how that seems to not be getting to the point!
Examples of corrections I have made to text in order to make it legible and worth reading:
"Due to the fact that" = BECAUSE
"To clarify" = I take the entire paragraph before it away and leave the one sentence that clarifies it, and if necessary leave one of the statements as an example.
"To the point" = gets deleted every time. You're just going to frustrate your reader if you haven't even gotten to the point yet and they are on page 50!
(One of my favorites here) "several, if not numerous" = (WHAT?) how about just leave it SEVERAL?
"not one, not two, but several" = (again, what?) leave em at "several", you aren't selling a new snake oil on an infomercial, this is a technical document!
"in order to speak to this point I will explain" = for example
"Because the blah blah blah is such that it requires our attention first we are going to bleepity, blip-blip it." = we are going to bleepity-blip-blip the blah blah because it requires our attention first.
"Is such that" is gone everytime! I hate that phrase!
The passive sentence: "bladdy-bladdy was moved by our team." = Our team moved bladdy-bladdy.
Anyway...just my little vent...can you think of other overly verbose phrases that make non-writers think they are? I need to hack a new piece of work apart and I want some fresh ways to make the techies cry...
Trish
Some of this stuff is ridiculously tedious...and everyone thinks they are a writer, and the wordier the better...GAG! And at the place I worked previously it was for an AFB, so gov't guys are checking this stuff out - and they aren't looking for fancy!
I'm all about the streamline sentence and I just wanted to throw a couple of these out here for you and see if you have some others. Keep in mind the people who read the acronym-laden document have a lot of other proposals to read as well, and typically the money man isn't the technical one who can understand it. It HAS to be clear and concise or they won't bother.
They make it 15 extra pages just to make it fancy. One even likes to ask a rhetorical question in the middle of a technical proposal. They don't want to guess! they want you to tell them how you will fix their problem.
The sentence structures are excruciating when it is all technical jargon...so I rearrange them, and of course leave tracking changes on so they can see what I did...I have sent many a techie away in tears.
so here's my vent! I want them all to know:
More words are NOT better writing! They are so unbelievable offended by taking away the meaningless fluff and making it read straight. The stuff is hard enough to understand as it is, then you add useless prep. phrases where one word would do. Rearrange sentence structure for variety, and confuse the crap out of the reader, by the time they get to the end of the sentence they have no idea what was just said.
Point A's with no point B to follow it, starting a sentence with "First" and not having a "second". Saying finally when you never had a first or second. Completely passive sentences beginning with "there are", Massive run on sentences that at closer inspection don't even have a verb. I had one techie that started about every 4th sentence with "However," and some how that seems to not be getting to the point!
Examples of corrections I have made to text in order to make it legible and worth reading:
"Due to the fact that" = BECAUSE
"To clarify" = I take the entire paragraph before it away and leave the one sentence that clarifies it, and if necessary leave one of the statements as an example.
"To the point" = gets deleted every time. You're just going to frustrate your reader if you haven't even gotten to the point yet and they are on page 50!
(One of my favorites here) "several, if not numerous" = (WHAT?) how about just leave it SEVERAL?
"not one, not two, but several" = (again, what?) leave em at "several", you aren't selling a new snake oil on an infomercial, this is a technical document!
"in order to speak to this point I will explain" = for example
"Because the blah blah blah is such that it requires our attention first we are going to bleepity, blip-blip it." = we are going to bleepity-blip-blip the blah blah because it requires our attention first.
"Is such that" is gone everytime! I hate that phrase!
The passive sentence: "bladdy-bladdy was moved by our team." = Our team moved bladdy-bladdy.
Anyway...just my little vent...can you think of other overly verbose phrases that make non-writers think they are? I need to hack a new piece of work apart and I want some fresh ways to make the techies cry...
Trish