Wow. Everyone loves Buzzword Bingo, but sometimes it gets a tad ridiculous. Back in July I got a gem via email. It started off with this zinger of an opener (*identities censored to protect the innocent*):
> Program Focuses On Helping The Open Source Ecosystem Grow Sustainable Businesses By Implementing A Community-Leveraged Model
It then went on to say:
> XXXXXXXXXX, a leading provider of commercial open source middleware solutions for database high availability, today announced XXXXXXXXXX. The program is focused on creating a rising tide for the broader open source ecosystem, and is focused on leveraging community-driven development and frictionless distribution to extend the ecosystem.
Shazzam!
It is interesting that when you remove the company and the specific announcement, the rest of the paragraph is completely meaningless. What exactly is *frictionless distribution*? Are the rest of us somehow lumbered with friction in our distribution? From what I can tell “*focused on leveraging community-driven development and frictionless distribution to extend the ecosystem*” is a lot of words for saying “*focused on Open Source development*”.
Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand that language is a tool and a facility, and it needs to be carefully selected and worded for your target audience – the choice of language for an executive director varies from the choice of language for a member of the IT team, and that varies from the choice of language for a typical community member. It would be naive to suggest that everyone should consume the same words, but we have to draw a line somewhere between spiritless generic text and *meaningless bullshit*.
When I was a journo and I was learning how to write effectively, I became a big fan of William Zinsser, the author of *On Writing Well*. This, combined with Strunk and White’s *The Elements Of Style* and a few books on journalism provided me with the chops for a career in writing. One salient point that Zinsser says is *Don’t write like an institution*, and it is something I have always taken as a core element in how I approach writing myself. His point is essentially the meat behind the point I was making above – don’t write meaningless institutional nonsense for the sake of it *sounding professional* – sure, write professional text that is carefully worded for you target audience, but there needs to be some real, accessible, understandable content in there
Lets look at this in practise. Lets take the original paragraph and re-write it:
> XXXXXXXXXX, a leading provider of commercial open source middleware solutions for database high availability, today announced XXXXXXXXXX. The program is focused on creating a rising tide for the broader open source ecosystem, and is focused on leveraging community-driven development and frictionless distribution to extend the ecosystem.
My version:
> XXXXXXXXXX, a leading provider of commercial open source middleware solutions for database high availability, today announced XXXXXXXXXX. The program is focused on growing the Open Source ecosystem by being a strong participant in emerging Open Source technologies.
…notice how I left in *ecosystem* and threw in *emerging technologies* to still play to the right audience. 🙂
Ding!
