I participated in a corporate meeting this week. The aim was to come up with a mission statement for one of our departments. One of the resulting drafts contained this sentence:
Our aim is to quantify the growth potential for the space including how our expertise may expand the market with implications on achieving our ambitions, and pinpointing the critical capabilities needed to successfully pull through to go-to-market.
Your guess what that means is as good as mine.
Before moving to California, I lived in England for many years. I never encountered sentences like this there. In corporate America, they’re commonplace. One reason for their absence in England is that anyone writing like this would get mocked with subtle irony, or in some cases with in-your-face irony.
There’s also more of a cultural commitment to good writing in England. Brochures and websites often state that they meet the Clear English Standard, an accreditation certifying readability. This includes literature by government agencies, the National Health Service and banks.
Fortunately, it’s not necessary to get an accreditation. A simpler way to improve the clarity of text is by pasting it into this app or by asking your favorite AI to critique it.
Nehaveigur 