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Better English 101
Tips For Communicating Better
Vol I, No. 4
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In this issue
-- GOBBLEDYGOOK, OR THE STRUTTING TURKEY
-- PRESS RELEASE GOBBLEDYGOOK
-- BANK GOBBLEDYGOOK

More Tips, More Examples

After turkey day, I thought it would be a good idea to look at gobbledygook. This issue reminds you not to strut. Feel free to write back with questions and comments.

For back issues, please see the archive by clicking on the newsletter quick link below.

GOBBLEDYGOOK, OR THE STRUTTING TURKEY
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 First, I have a difficult time spelling gobbledygook...had to practice writing it several times, to be honest.

It refers to language that is overly complicated, nonsensical, unintelligible, pretentious, baffling. Credit Maury Maverick, chairman of a public corporation, for banning it in a 1944 memo. He was inspired by the strut of the turkey, "always gobbledy gobbling with ludicrous pomposity. At the end of his gobble, there was sort of gook."

(In a staff memo, Maverick warned that anyone using the words "implementation" or "activation" would be shot.)

Gobbledygook has gotten quite a bit of attention lately. Let's look at some recent headlines. All the while, keep asking yourself if that last sentence you produced made you sound like a strutting turkey.


PRESS RELEASE GOBBLEDYGOOK
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 Consultant David Meerman Scott asked Factivia, a Dow Jones & Reuters Company, to study 388,000 press releases sent by North American technology companies from January, 2006 to September, 2006. Words or phrases determined to be gobbledygook appeared in more than 74,000 releases.

Here are some of the phrases:

--"Next generation" was the winner with 9,895 uses.

--Words with more than 5,000 uses include "flexible," "world class," "scalable," and "easy- to-use."

--Words with 2,000 to 5,000 uses include "cutting edge," "groundbreaking," and "market leading."

One way to get away from gobbledygook is to concentrate on your reader rather than yourself. Instead of strutting out language to impress, ask yourself what is it that the reader wants to know from me?


BANK GOBBLEDYGOOK
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 Yes, most of the press releases in the study were sent by technology companies. But banks aren't technology companies, and we depend on them for a great portion of our lives. They can be as confusing or even more confusing than the technobabblers.

A General Accounting Office study was heralded with this headline in the October 31 issue of USA TODAY: "Banks Use Gobbledygook to Mask Sleazy Practices."

According to the government, disclosure statements by major credit card issuers are just too complicated for the average citizen to read. Key information is scattered or buried, the print is too small, and complex phrases like "rolling consecutive twelve billing cycle period" could be replaced with "12 months."

The dense language hides practices that really are sleazy, and it points to the connection that communicators simply don't make between being clear and being honest. Let me predict that sooner than later, because of the speed and depth of global communications, consumers will rebel against this dishonesty in a manner that will turn companies upside down.

Meanwhile, the GAO is recommending that credit card companies simplify and humanize their language.

To be fair, Edward Yingling, president and chief executive of the National Banking Association, has pointed out that credit cost varies with consumer risk. In his own gobbledygook: "The pricing has gotten more nuanced."

The six credit card issuers examined in the study account for 80 percent of credit card lending in the country:

Citigroup Inc.'s Citibank;
JP Morgan Chase & Co.'s Chase Bank USA;
Bank of America Corp.;
MBNA Corp.'s MBNA America Bank;
Capital One Financial Corp.'s Capital One Bank,
and Morgan Stanley's Discover Financial Services.

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan asked the GAO to conduct the study--done from June 2005 to September 2006.

To download a copy of the GAO study, click below:

Best wishes,
Barry Beckham

GAO Study


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