Factorial
September 2008

The power of good communication
from Mary Morel, consultant, trainer and author
www.themfactor.com.au

Contents

Phrases you love to hate
Language — colons, em rules and the singular 'they'
Marketing— phrases you love to hate
Quote of the month

Phrases you love to hate

In an entertaining article 'Are you going forward? Then stop now' (BBC Magazine), Lucy Kellaway looks at the epidemic use of the phrase 'going forward' and makes fun of some of our other pet hates.

Two of the most amusing examples of the use of 'going forward' are:

'When asked if he was going to be the England captain again after his triumph with Trinidad and Tobago, David Beckham came out with the gnomic reply "Going forward, who knows." It seems that the less one has to say, the more likely one is to reach for a going forward as a crutch. Politicians find it comforting for this reason. "We are going forward" poor Hillary Clinton said just before the last, fatal primary . . . when it became indisputable that she was going nowhere of the kind.'

For nearly a decade, Lucy Kellaway wrote a fictional column in the Financial Times about a senior manager who spoke in business cliches.

She says: 'Martin Lukes talked the talk. Or rather, he added value by reaching out and sharing his blue sky thinking. At the end of the day he stepped up to the plate and delivered world class jargon that really pushed the envelope. After eight years of being him I came to accept the nouns pretending to be verbs. To task and to impact. Even the new verb to architect I almost took in my stride. I didn't even really mind the impenetrable sentences full of leveraging value and paradigm shifts. But what still rankled after so long were the little things: that he said myself instead of me and that he would never talk about a problem, when he could dialogue around an issue instead.'

It is often the little things, isn't it? I cringe when I see 'myself' used wrongly, but I think it's here to stay.

As I read on, I smiled even more broadly when Lucy Kellaway dealt with the word 'passion'.

'Passion, says the dictionary, means a strong sexual desire or the suffering of Christ at the crucifixion. In other words it doesn't really have an awful lot to do with a typical day in the office — unless things have gone very wrong indeed. And yet passion is something that every employee must attest to in order to get through any selection process.'

If you enjoy being a pedant and want to smile at our crankiness about words, visit http://news.bbc.co.uk:80/1/hi/magazine/7453584.stm

You can also click through to 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7457287.stm

Thanks to the reader who sent me the link to this article.

Back to the top

Language — colons, em rules and the singular 'they'

Reader's question: When should you use a colon and when is an em rule more appropriate?
My answer: Let's start with some definitions.

A colon (:) is used to introduce additional information such as a list, quotation, dialogue or question.
An em rule (—), which many people think of as a dash, is used to:

• mark an abrupt change in the direction of a sentence
  The weather is wonderful — How was your holiday?
• provide additional or explanatory information
  Make sure your passport is current — you pay a premium to get a passport in a hurry.
• isolate statements within a sentence. With this type of sentence you could have used brackets or commas.
  No-one — apart from the teachers — remembered to bring lunch.

You can use either a colon or an em rule to introduce additional information. For example:

• The figures shed little light on the key to profitability: innovation.
• The figures shed little light on the key to profitability — innovation.

I think the choice depends largely on the formality of the writing. You're more likely to use a colon in formal writing and an em rule in informal writing.

Reader's question: When should you use an initial capital after a colon?
My answer: Well, the experts don't agree on this subject, so I've decided to make up my own rules. Let me know what you think — mary@themfactor.com.au

Use an initial capital after a colon:

• for a quote
• for a question
• for proper names
• full sentences in bulleted lists
• for clauses or phrases that would normally have an initial capital (e.g. Chapter 1: Staring at the sun).

Use an initial lower case for:

• items in a list such as this one
• a list within a sentence
  Please remember to bring: a pen, paper and something to eat.
• phrases or clauses that amplify, contrast or summarise the previous words.
  There's only one word to describe his behaviour: immoral.

With PowerPoint, I think many people start most bullet points with an initial capital, but don't use fullstops. Microsoft's default in action again?

Back to the top

Marketing — phrases you love to hate

Marketing language can be as ugly as business language. A recruitment ad that comes over the loud speaker at my local gym says something like: '. . . if you are hungry for sales, have a passion for fitness and a desire to help people . . . '

What marketing phrases annoy you? Email mary@themfactor.com.au

Quote of the month

'The first draft of anything is shit.'
Ernest Hemingway

Mary Morel
Author of Promote Your Business and Talk Up Your Business
The M Factor
Level 1, 14 Moncur St, Woollahra, NSW 2025, Australia
http://www.themfactor.com.au
Ph: 61 2 9363 2972 or 0400 686 600
Email: mary@themfactor.com.au

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