Vijayalaxmi

A couple of months ago, The New York Times made public some very interesting internal data: a list of words that its online readers were frequently looking up. On the NYT site, you can look up the meaning of any word by selecting it and clicking on the small question mark that appears beside.

The story about these findings is here. Some of the oft-looked up words were:

sui generis
solipsistic
louche
laconic
saturnine
antediluvian
epistemological
shibboleths
schadenfreude
feckless

The deputy editor, Philip Corbett, in his memo asked reporters to not talk down to readers and to use fanciful, uncommon words only when the situation warranted it: ‘… striking and very specific words can become wan and devalued through overuse. Consider apotheosis, which we’ve somehow managed to use 18 times so far this year. It literally means “deification, transformation into a divinity.” An extended meaning is “a glorified ideal.” But in some of our uses it seems to suggest little more than “a pretty good example.” Most recently, we’ve said critics view the Clinton health-care plan as “the apotheosis of liberal, out-of-control bureaucracy-building,” and we’ve described cut-off shorts as “that apotheosis of laissez-faire wear.”

‘So what do we say if someone really is transformed into a god?’

Corbett also admitted being stumped by two words on the list: sumptuary and phlogiston.

The story has drawn many comments and some readers have said NYT shouldn’t blacklist the big words because they loved them and read the NYT because it used such words. Some others have said they love learning new words that NYT introduces them to and they should not be robbed of this joy.

This brings us to oft-repeated questions used in arguments against plain language:

1. How plain should plain be?
The NYT readers have already answered this question. ‘Bildungsroman’ may have seemed to be a grand piece of Roman architecture to some, while ‘paroxysm’ may have had people wondering if this was some form of an orgasm. If you have to use a big word, make sure there is no other everyday word that will do the job equally well.

2. Who decides what’s plain enough for whom?
Your readers decide what’s plain. You write to be read, unless you’re jotting down things in your personal diary. If your readers do not understand you at the first reading, you have failed to communicate. A newspaper is a mass medium of communication and there’s no way of telling who knows what. When it’s becoming increasingly difficult for newspapers to prove their relevance and keep their business viable, ‘Sisyphean’ surely is not helping them.

3.    Should all text be written for five-year-olds?
As we have said earlier, plain language is about being honest with your reader. It does not mean dumbing down. If you have something to say, say it clearly. That shouldn’t be too difficult if you have well-formed ideas.

Also, as Corbett’s note on ‘apotheosis’ shows, writers frequently get enamoured with some words and use them even when the specific meaning is not intended. This dilutes the purpose of the word. And often, the point is to ‘show’ the writer’s scholarship more than anything else.

The other trap writers fall in is to get so involved with their writing that they leave the reader far behind. It’s more like they are making notes for themselves.

Jargon is bad for business

The NYT web analytics data not only tells us about how news should be written, but also gives businesses valuable insights into how they should be talking to their customers.

You’ll perhaps never have a customer come up to you and tell you they didn’t understand what you meant by ‘knowledge-based organisational alignment’ or by ‘deconstructed relative contingencies’. They’ll just assume you don’t care.

Have you ever asked any of your customers what they think of the letters you send out, the user manuals or help documents you create, or the canned responses you use? What you write to your customer tells a lot about your company – whether you’re keen on putting the terms across clearly or you want to hide behind jargon and legalese.

The language you use is a very important part of your branding. You don’t want to be remembered as a gobbledygook company, do you? Speak smart, if you are.