everybody thinks they're a writer...

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Stew21

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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... :D

Trish
 

blacbird

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You touched briefly on one of my major peeves: Sentences that begin with some permutation of "There was X that did Y", or "It was X that did Y". It's easy to write such things in rough draft, and not harmful, as long as you recognize the need to fix them upon editing. I keep a growing list of things like this to be searched for through a document when I'm editing. In these instances, I just use the word-processor to hunt for ever instance of "it was" or "there was", and nuke as many as possible.

caw.
 

Stew21

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Shadow_Ferret said:
Psst. Shouldn't that be "everybody thinks they're a writer?" ;)

My favorites are "as of this moment" or "at the present time" Um, do you mean Now?

Dammit!! I hate when I do that! (*^&%$^%&*!!!!) Me, complaining about these people and I can't even get the title right....
Trish = dumb@***

truly: everybody thinks he is a writer is most correct, isn't it?
They all think they're writers is also correct....I don't know what mine was...
 
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spike

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I'm a computer/network analyst/technician. Yes, that is my job title. I know what you mean. Long, jargon and acronymn full text is an occupational hazard.

We talk in jargon and acronymns. It's called job security. Of course that is going to slop over to our writing if we aren't careful (and most aren't).
 

CaroGirl

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I'm a technical writer/editor at a software company, so I totally hear what you're saying. My main problem is with the proliferation of passives. Non-writers LOVE passives, and have no idea what's wrong with them.

They also have a fondness for the future tense. Like: The program will restart, instead of: The program restarts. As if it doesn't do it now, but might at some unspecified time in the future.
 

Stew21

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spike said:
I'm a computer/network analyst/technician. Yes, that is my job title. I know what you mean. Long, jargon and acronymn full text is an occupational hazard.

We talk in jargon and acronymns. It's called job security. Of course that is going to slop over to our writing if we aren't careful (and most aren't).

I've hired people with that title! :) I don't mind the acronyms and jargon, it has to be there, its industry standard - goes with the territory - but when they try to make it wordy and pretty and look how many words I can use to make myself sound smart amid the jargon and acronyms, it just makes it longer and a bigger pain in the butt to read for their non-tech audience. So I'm the one in between that understands the tech enough that I can read a doc. like that and change it so it is simpler for other people - mostly by taking away the unnecessary stuff they add to it that dilutes their already difficult explanations. KWIM?
And really, it doesn't even need to be technical in nature, business writing in general is too wordy and uses passive phrases, over used "office slang", poor sentence structures etc.
 

Stew21

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I had a manager that was "English-as-a-second-language" who continually had me re-write his documents, send his memos, do his status reports. He would tell me what he wanted it to say, I would say it, send it to him for review, and would tell me I needed to add more fluff to it. I told him to give me more relevant material and it would be longer, otherwise, that was a clear as it needed to be.:) He hated that!
 

Stew21

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he also had a fondness for over used business language: I think he used that conference room bingo game as his chart of phrases he must use at least once a day.

"Think out of the box" - well when you put it like that, it makes me want to Fed Ex you across the country in the box you're in - think of a new way to say it - come on, "think out of the box with your language choices!" ;)


"It's a paradigm-shift" - oh give me an F'n break!

"this isn't rocket-science, here people!" - no, its software architecture, information security, and application development. Ask the rocket scientist if he wants to try it.
 

dahmnait

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When you figure it out, will you let me know?
Now, to be fair, there are times where passive phrasing is essential to the document. I just finished a business letter where I had to use passive phrasing in a few parts, else the document would have been too accusatory.

Here is one I ran across today. It was a Worker's Comp description of Terrorism Insurance. (Note: I am taking this from memory, so it may not be exact.)


The Act Of Terrorism is as described below:

a. An Act of Terrorism



Can't get much more specific than that.
smile.gif
 

CaroGirl

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Jargon that I hate:

“This will help us going forward” as if we do anything “going backwards”

“Are capable of providing” um, how about “can provide”

“Sellers understand the value proposition of Company X products and know how to position them to Customers in different vertical market segments.” This must mean something to somebody somewhere.


“All’s I’m saying is…” (what?) This is likely peculiar to my boss. I’m not sure what kind of word “all’s” is. I added the apostrophe in a desperate attempt to make sense of it.
 

Jaycinth

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When people annoy me I respond with detailed e-mails.

The e-mails are packed with jargon and bafflegab so thick that even a seasoned Washington Lobbyist would turn pale and gag.

That makes me happy.

If they continue to annoy me. I return their e-mails with no answer, but grammer and spelling corrected.

That makes me happy too!
 

cool_st_elizabeth

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Doctors are terrible. I used to transcribe medical charts for a living. This is a few sentences from a chart by one of the *best* dictators:

"She is a nondrinker. She had her last drink greater than a year ago. She was a binge drinker on weekends. She is a smoker, greater than a pack a day. She has a 40 pack-year history of smoking. She is a non-drug user. She currently states she does not use drugs routinely."

I got paid by the character. Otherwise I might have changed it to:

"She was formerly a binge drinker on weekends but has not had a drink for over a year. She has a 40 pack-year history of smoking, currently smoking greater than a pack a day. She does not routinely use drugs."

And 99% of doctors dictate operative reports in the passive mode, i.e., "The mediastinum was closed with 3-0 interrupted Vicryl" ... I've heard "I closed the mediastinum with 3-0 interrupted Vicryl" only rarely. Sheesh.
 

Gehanna

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I can barely tolerate tediousness. I'd rather slit my wrists, bleed half to death and leave just enough life in my body to self suture my wounds than to be in the midst of tedium.

Know what I'd do, I'd offer to give an inservice and provide some education. If the writing didn't improve then I'd take the technical proposal back to the geek who wrote it and say, "Try it again Mr. Wizard. You've been inserviced."

psy7ven

edit to add -- I wasn't serious about the wrist cutting thing. :D
 

Jcomp

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Stew21 said:
(One of my favorites here) "several, if not numerous" = (WHAT?) how about just leave it SEVERAL?

What???...indeed...
 

Stew21

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Jcomp said:
What???...indeed...

I think I laughed out loud when he saw the tracking change line through it and dropped his jaw in dismay...apparently he thought that was clever.
with neither several nor numerous being descriptive or concrete I asked him for a number to replace them both - he didn't have one...Jacka$$
 

Jcomp

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Stew21 said:
I think I laughed out loud when he saw the tracking change line through it and dropped his jaw in dismay...apparently he thought that was clever.
with neither several nor numerous being descriptive or concrete I asked him for a number to replace them both - he didn't have one...Jacka$$

I mean, maybe it would've been clever as a bad joke. A sort of "I know this is lame, but that's why it's funny, because it's so unabashedly lame" kind of thing. But not as something to be taken as any sort of serious. Heavens no. Wow. Then he didn't even have a number? Again, wow. This is why I'm trying to leave the office environment.
 

Carole

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At least half of my job is volleying email. If I had a nickel for "each and every" time I read "moving forward" or "outside the box" or "working as a team, we can..." or...my least-best favorite "let's get on the same page" I'd be rich.

I swear these people spend WAY too much time reading motivational posters.
 
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