Give Verbs a Chance--and Cut the Clutter

Recently in The Washington Post, Dave Carpenter reported on initiatives taken by U.S. businesses to improve the written communication skills of their employees. In workplace memos and e-mails, he noted, too often clarity and conciseness are sacrificed in favor of "the cliche-thick murk of corporatespeak."

Consider, for example, this wordy attempt at a job description:

It is my job to ensure proper process deployment activities take place to support process institutionalization and sustainment. Business process management is the core deliverable of my role, which requires that I identify process competency gaps and fill those gaps.

The official term for such verbal gunk is excessive nominalization--that is, piling up nouns (such as "process deployment activities" and "process institutionalization and sustainment") in an effort to make something sound more important than it is.

In More Ways to Cut the Clutter, we recommend this cure for excessive nominalization: don't name something when you can show it instead. In other words, give verbs a chance.

The mush-mouthed manager has conveniently illustrated all five of the faults we consider. As well as favoring noun forms of verbs, he relies too much on the passive voice, employs empty phrases, uses vague nouns, and tries--in vain--to show off.

So what is Carpenter's translation of the gobbledygook? What process is actually being processed here? What truly is the fellow's "core deliverable"?

"I'm the training director." Now we can all go home.