Miss Communications

Jargon or Malarkey?

Jargon can be a pain. It replaces the simple language we easily understand with fancier words and terms, and it leaves us wondering whether the thing that was just said is the thing that we think was just said or if perhaps it was something else.

But jargon can also be important. It’s often specific, useful language that helps a group of insiders communicate with efficiency, precision and speed.

Look up some interesting disease, for example, and you might find a compendium of orthostatic this and adrenocorticotropic that, along with contraindications, epidemiological factors and more. Spend a little time with an avid sailor and you’re likely get an earful about jib trimming, hoisting and dousing – not to mention ducking the boom.

Altogether, specific language helps us improve our precision and understanding, and it keeps people from making disastrous mistakes – like confusing a kidney with a pancreas, or whacking a boatswain in the head.

But there’s another type of jargon; the type that’s made of fuzzy terms and squishy words that actually hide the facts underneath. There’s a lot of anti-specific jargon in the business world, and it’s anything but helpful or precise.

Business jargon – let’s just call it “malarkey” – generally falls into four categories:

• The vague phrases that hint at something important but aren’t sensibly defined (“We’re creating a paradigm shift”);
• The nouns and verbs that have been hijacked into some weird, non-traditional use (“Our project has been left-laned”);
• The glorified appellations that make minor accomplishments sound important (“We’re working on the final deliverables”); and
• The metaphors that try to pump up the excitement level without adding any real meat (“We want you to think outside the box”).

The problem with business malarkey – as opposed to genuine industry jargon – is that it doesn’t make anything clear. It brings no real information to light (what paradigm is shifting – and how?); it’s often used to hide insignificance under a layer of fluff (by "deliverables" do you mean “paperwork”?); and it can set people up for failures that were never outlined in the first place (nope – you’re still not outside the box).

When you find yourself in a tangle of difficult-to-understand phrasing – whether it’s your own work or that of someone else – how do you know whether it needs to be re-jiggered and made easier to understand? The simplest way is to look at the types of terms that are being used.

If the phrasing is exact and specific, the jargon probably doesn’t need to be changed. Depending on the audience, it might be a good idea to add clear definitions or a glossary for the not-yet-informed, but removing the clear terminology is likely to do more harm than good.

But if you’re facing jargon that’s indistinct and vague, the best solution is to look for a simpler set of words. Step back from the fuzzy, the fluffy and the deliberately obscure, and find the simple, clear words that accurately describe the truth.

The Science of Asking for Directions

Asking for directions is usually a subject for gender-minded comedy. Women often ask, we’re told; and men often don’t. Insert you-may-not-be-helpless-but-you’re-lost joke here.

But understanding how direction-asking works is also a serious subject of research.

Recently, scientists at the Technical University of Munich created a robot called ACE – for Autonomous City Explorer – and sent it out to find its way in the world. Specifically, ACE was instructed to travel from the university to Munich’s Marienplatz, about 1.5 kilometers away. To get there, it had to ask for – and follow – directions.

ACE had no map or GPS, but it was programmed to recognize pedestrians and ask for help. It would roll up and ask people to touch its screen if they were willing to give directions, then it would ask them to point it toward Marienplatz. After registering the information, the robot would say “Thank you very much for your help” and roll off in the right direction.

Whenever ACE encountered an obstacle, it would look for another human and ask again.

In the Munich experiment, ACE interacted with 38 people and took almost 5 hours to get to its destination – but don’t take that as proof that direction-asking is guaranteed to slow us down. Hindered by its own appeal and novelty, ACE was stopped many times by people who simply wanted to check out the interesting, talking machine.

What can we learn from ACE and its how-to-ask-for-directions adventure? There are the obvious lessons: Quirkiness attracts attention; and it takes a long time to reach your goals if you don’t actually have a brain.

But there are interesting parallels between the pure-logic world of the robot and the semi-logic world of people, and ACE offers lessons on how to get sensible help.

First, ACE asked people if they were willing to assist. That first step ensured that its gesture-recognition software would pay attention at only the right times – not tune in to every swinging arm and pointing hand it ran across. But it also reminds us that the best information comes from those who are specifically ready to help, and it’s sensible – not to mention kind – to ask first.

Second, ACE asked for exactly what it needed. Its developers knew that interpreting a physical gesture would be more reliable than parsing spoken directions – it’s too easy for people to get “turn left” and “turn right” mixed up – so ACE specifically asked people to point rather than speak. If we were all that well programmed, we, too, would let people know what type of answers we’d appreciate. “Can you tell me step by step?” for example, or “I’d love it if you could draw me a map.”

And finally, ACE used “Thank you” at the end of each conversation. Besides signaling an end to the exchange, that nicety may have helped the bucket of bolts engage more help by coming across with humanity and charm.

And we could all use a little more of that.

Congratulations! We'd like to sell you something!

As I make my way through a business re-launch, I'm trying to buy a URL. Somebody else owns it, but they're not using it, so I've made an offer through a third party.

Each day I get an e-mail saying my offer has been presented but there's no word yet from the seller. But today I got an e-mail from the third-party service - which also handles Web site hosting - saying "You Have Your Domain Name! NOW WHAT?" and offering "a complete array "of services "designed to help me succeed."

Wow! I have my domain name!

Or do I?

A non-specific e-mail seemed like a rather unofficial and underwhelming way to let me know my offer had been accepted, so I called the toll-free number to check it out. And guess what? I don't have my domain name. It was just the marketing department, jumping the gun and hoping to sell me a few services. Oops.

If I do get my domain name, guess how confident I'll feel about working with them? Yeah. Anybody out there got a great Web site hosting service they recommend?

The Positives in Policies

Recently a communication-workshop client of mine was having trouble with a new policy. The company had changed from “When you attend our events, you make your own hotel arrangements” to “Lodging is now part of our service.”

Unfortunately, the new procedure had put customers in a cranky mood. As it turns out, the write-up on their Web site was a prickly discourse from start to finish, so it wasn’t surprising that people didn’t want to comply.

Part of the problem was the language itself. The word “policy” (think “police”) came on strong from the start, and a number of directives scolded “You must” do this or “You will be charged” for that.

Another hitch was the document’s physical layout: Each regulation was delivered in italicized, boldface and/or underlined text, and some lines screamed out in angry red. A quick glance through the text brought the reader’s eyes from one mini-rant to the next.

It’s easy to see how such policies get written. Companies know they’ve got to get their information across directly so no one will misunderstand. And to pre-empt dispute, they launch into a you-have-to-comply tone.

Now, Miss Communications is the last person to suggest that sugar-coating or mealy-mouthing your way through information is a great way to communicate. But companies sometimes make things much grouchier than they need to be, and a few simple techniques can bring out the good stuff without ignoring the bad.

First, pay attention to the positive. In my client’s case, they were making it easy to find lodging, they were offering to handle the entire process through a simple phone call, and the goal was to secure a nice place to stay – think vacation condos and swimming pools – while taking a trip with one’s friends.

Bringing positives like that to the forefront, instead of focusing on rules and edicts from the start, makes an entire write-up feel much more upbeat. Yes, you may need to list the regulations and a few legal disclaimers as well. But moving that stuff out of the initial description lets the good news come through.

Second, focus on the presentation and not just the writing itself. Highlighting all the negative points with italics, underlining and big red type makes a document come across as an angry tirade – which nobody wants to read.

Adding a graphic or two – we chose a photo of a pool with palm trees – can create a calmer mood. And keeping the fonts friendly and un-stressed delivers information in a more even, logical tone.

One thing to avoid when you’re trying to soften a document is any sort of insincerity or two-faced preamble. Most people are savvy enough to know that the phrase “In order to serve our customers better” generally precedes a gotcha, such as “We’re no longer accepting checks” or “Service calls will now be routed to Rangoon.”

But an honest approach to “Here’s the good news” and “Here are the specifics you need to know” can help keep customers from starting off on the wrong foot – and heading into an angry rant of their own.

Now Hear This

Oh, the difficulties we writers put ourselves through just to help our readers. For example, in the name of professional research, your loyal correspondent recently spent a shocking amount of time losing at a couple of video games online.

In the course of my active and investigative study (ahem) I discovered that any sound over 85 decibels can hurt your ears, cotton balls are not effective hearing-protection devices, and if you hit the up-arrow key too many times, your little triangular-shaped shooting device disappears off the edge of the screen.

Why the hearing-themed video games? Because May is Better Hearing and Speech Month, and the folks at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association want everyone to learn a thing or two. For example, playing music too loudly through your earbuds or headphones can damage the fragile mechanisms in your ears, and catching random-colored balls in a funny-looking hat is a lot more fun than a lecture.

ASHA is an organization that’s made up of audiologists, speech-language pathologists and scientists, and their goal is to make effective communication accessible and achievable for all. That means advancing research and solutions for the various speech and hearing problems that can appear in childhood, of course – and it also means promoting effective communication for adults, in our personal lives as well as at work.

Lynne Howell, MS, CCC, is a Speech-Language Pathologist with the Center for Neurorehabilitation Services in Fort Collins, Colo. Howell and her colleagues regularly meet with adults who have experienced damage to their hearing and/or speaking abilities – through incidents or as a by-product of age or too much noise – and help them find ways to make up for the loss.

Often, Howell told me, the solutions include technology. For example, people who can’t project their voices can still speak to a large audience, as long as they’ve got a microphone. And people who can’t hear well can still listen in, as long as they’ve got an amplification hearing device. For those who have more complicated language-processing problems, there are tape recorders, speech-to-text devices and more.

And to help everyone who works in an open office space – those vast cubicle farms known to many and loved by few – there are white noise machines that crank out a bland sound, masking other sounds and conversations and letting workers zero in on the voices they want to hear.

Among the most important messages ASHA wants to get out during Better Hearing and Speech Month is the one behind those fun little video games at ListenToYourBuds.org: Don’t wreck your own hearing by playing your music too loud.

“Even as adults we need to be careful about watching the volume level on an MP3 player,” Howell said. “Not cranking up the iPod is a good thing.”

Yes, and blasting away alien shapes with your arrow keys and spacebar is a good thing, too. So if you’ll excuse me now, I’ve got a little more research to do – and a pretty bad score to beat.