Stymieing Sesquipedalia
You see it everywhere.
We optimize our core competencies to drive value-added outcomes…
All stakeholders are aligned on the actionable KPIs that will deliver maximum ROI to move the needle…
Allocate resources effectively to ensure all hands are on deck while maintaining a 30,000-foot view of the ways in which our long-term vision aligns with mission-critical tasks…
Scratching your head? Us too.
When a writer turns to jargon, their words take up space, but they communicate little. Jargon leaves colleagues frustrated and confused - and gives the impression that the writer really has no idea what they’re talking about.
Good ideas deserve better.
When we founded The Hedera Group, an agency that helps executives and teams learn to communicate more effectively, we were thinking of writing exactly like this.
Our newsletter is called Stet, an editorial term that means “let stand.” (If you haven’t picked up on this yet, we’re big punctuation nerds. After all, we named our agency after the ❧, the precursor to the ¶!) In general, when we work with clients, we like to stet as much as we can: We’re not here to teach you to write in our voice, we tell them. We’re here to help you refine your own.
If we worked with the people who wrote the phrases at the beginning of this newsletter, we’d help them realize that their writing is plagued by an all-too-common malady: saying in seven flowery words what could be said in three simple ones. The strongest writers don’t turn to convoluted phrasing and jargon; they use simple language to clearly communicate sophisticated ideas.
As educators who have taught writing for over 15 years, we are big believers in approaches that break down complex tasks—like writing—into manageable steps. At the Hedera Group, we teach our clients our POWER process, which distills the writing process into five clearly-defined steps:
Plan
Outline
Write
Edit
Revise
When we see look at the sentences above, we know that there was a breakdown in the P and E stages: the writers didn’t clearly take the time to think through what they intended to write before putting figurative pencil to paper—and then, after doing so, they didn’t read their work aloud to listen for clarity and concision, breaking up their phrasing into easily digestible sections.
In other words, we see poor writing — but we also know that the breakdown happened well before the writers put figurative pencil to paper.
For instance: “We optimize our core competencies…” seems to suggest that the writer wants their audience to think about using certain skills or strengths. But… what are they?
The core problem in these phrases is not the hackneyed phrasing, but the fact that the writers have not thought about the concrete, specific message that they actually want to communicate. Through our coaching process, the writer would develop the ability to see this for themselves - and to use simple, systematic processes to generate and refine ideas before putting words on the page. The sentence above, for instance, becomes “We know how to break large goals into 2-week milestones.” And the phrasing itself goes from onerous to easy: “The ways in which,” for instance, becomes “how.”
In every installment of Stet, we will point to common writing pitfalls, as well as strategies that can help you communicate your ideas more clearly and compellingly—and ultimately bring in new business.
If you’d like to discuss ways we might help you or your team, please reach out: hi@the-hedera-group.com (or e-mail one of us directly: andy@the-hedera-group.com or emily@the-hedera-group.com.)
And, as we build up our business, we are looking for new clients! If you know of anyone who might be interested in working with us, please forward this newsletter along to them.
Emily and Andy