It’s time for civil servants to stop ‘cascading’ messages to their ‘stakeholders’, and start talking like normal people, argues Neil Taylor.

You probably know the game which I’ll politely call ‘boardroom bingo’. Most organisations have a version – usually named less judiciously – because most organisations are swimming in jargon. The civil service is in danger of drowning in it. When you’ve finished reading this article you’ll flip back to emails full of ‘stakeholders’, ‘pathways’, ‘beacons’ and things you need to ‘cascade’.

Sometimes, these words are useful shorthand. More often, though, they’re a defence mechanism. We use them to show we’re in the club, or up with the latest ideas, or to cover up a lack of new thinking, or clear thinking, or any kind of thinking at all.

Governments are by no means the only culprits. But in years of writing – and rewriting – for different kinds of organisations, we’ve spotted a few linguistic sins of which the civil service is particularly guilty. So here are a few tips to translate your writing from wonkish to human.

Cutting hedges
The DWP website used to say:

‘The Department's aim is to enable people to fulfil their potential over longer, more active lives. The focus remains firmly on customers, providing them with the services they need and aiming (wherever possible) to join up services with business partners in both the public and private sectors.’

To be fair, they’ve changed it now – perhaps because I keep taking the mickey out of it on conference platforms – and the new wording isn’t bad. But it contains a couple of examples of typically cautious civil service speak. “The Department’s aim is to enable people to fulfil their potential...” implies: don’t blame us if we don’t do it, it’s just our aim. And “aiming (wherever possible) to join up services...” contains two get-outs in one sentence.

This is not the way to make your message stick with your reader, or to convince them of your confidence. “Thou shalt not kill” is a line that’s been in use for a couple of thousand years. Note that it doesn’t say “Thou shalt aim not to kill”. Nor is it “Thou shalt aim not to kill (wherever possible)” – although on closer inspection, that seems to be the Bible’s actual policy. The simple, confident, unequivocal version sticks much more.

The civil service is riddled with this kind of hedgy language. Ministers are much more likely to be “committed” to doing something than to do it. Departments “support” things, rather than doing them. Sometimes they’re even “committed to supporting”. Strip out the waffle and you’ll soon see what they’re really going to do, and what’s mere linguistic fluff.

As opposed to?
The hedges aren’t all you can strip out of civil service writing. Back to the DWP: “The focus remains firmly on customers.” As opposed to? The focus remains weakly on customers? If the opposite of what you’ve written sounds ridiculous, chances are you’ve got a word you just don’t need. HR departments are always saying they’ve done “full and fair investigations”. As opposed to partial and unfair ones?

Saying these things doesn’t make them true. Usually, as writers, we include them to convince ourselves; but oddly, we sound less confident as a result. So every time you find your typing finger hovering over the keys for “robust” or “innovative”, try the ‘as opposed to’ test.

There are tons more tips where those came from to make your writing sound more natural and straightforward, without losing any credibility. Try dropping Latinate words (like obtain, request or action) in favour of Anglo-Saxon ones (get, ask, do) or nouns for verbs (talking about what people ‘need’, rather than their ‘requirements’). And this isn’t just “plain English”, by the way. Good English isn’t “plain”. It’s clear, yes, but also natural, human, persuasive, surprising, or enthusiastic – whatever you need that bit of writing to be.

Who cares?
Even if you agree with what I’m suggesting here, you still might be wondering about the benefit of spending a few extra minutes in your busy day honing your language into something more human. Well, first, once you get your ear in, these changes need not take any time; in fact, they usually end up saving you time: you write less, and write something closer to what’s in your head, without having to do a corporate translation. In turn, that usually saves your readers time. Even a few seconds shaved off every email people read and write can make a big difference.

And some of our private sector clients have saved cold, hard cash by doing the same editing job. If you deal with complaints better, it stops people writing in. If you can cut down the scripts in call centres, that saves time and money. In fact, businesses who’ve looked at their language find it pays for itself, as well as making customers and employees happier. Now cascade that to your finance director.

Neil Tayloris creative director of language consultancy The Writer, and author of Brilliant Business Writing.

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Written by Neil Taylor