From time to time, individuals and organisations bubble up asking for “simple” English. Though it is difficult to define “simple” English, these enthusiasts give us examples to show what is not. According to “language simplifiers”, the ‘legal way of writing’ (heh, heh, I love that!) or ‘legalese’ is the worst in convoluted, meant-to-obfuscate writing. They want it banned. Cut out the ‘whereases’ and ‘parties of the second part’, they say.
While legal documents are still written in stiff language, the problem has been compounded by the introduction of buzzwords and phrases in IT. The minute you join the IT sector, you see this transformation in your speech. It is like Cinderella spinning into a beauty queen, the ugly professor transforming into the debonair gentleman in evening clothes. And like these characters, the IT lingo has acquired an air of mystery. People outside the sector just can’t follow it, and those inside use it without really understanding the words and phrases. Here is an example.
“Let us dimensionalize your value proposition and then leverage our synergies to operationalize a disruptive portfolio for sustainable global competitive advantage.” I’d love to meet the people who coin these words. Are there departments doing just this? “Bob, here’s the next lot. Please read what’s appearing on your desktop, convert and revert. Tks.”
I asked a Professor of English what that sentence meant. “Six months,” he joked. Hey, they are English words! He said, “Let’s see… “dimensionalise? ‘Dimension’ means … just when did the word become a verb?” Quite.
Here is a riddle. Guess what this company makes?
“A global leader in pressure-sensitive technology and innovative self-adhesive solutions for consumer products and label materials.”
Another one: “A personalised eco-unit maintenence tool.”
Why do we write English, to understand which we need a key? One HR executive told me it was done purposely to confuse employees. But why?
Finally, this.The sentence is a classic example of addiction to computer lingo. It’s fun, actually.
...as you are from IT industry, always you can’t be like read-only file format then you will be thrown like access denied message…So manage your code as updatable query and allow the external script to format …
Care to translate the sentences in italics?
