Buzzwords vs. Benefits

Buzzwords obscure, confuse, or evade. Benefits sell products and ideas. If you use too many buzzwords too often, most educated audiences will conclude you lack the ability to be clear, truthful, or direct. Never assume everyone understands your esoteric language. If you don't know what you're doing, stop doing it. If you do know, state it clearly and simply.

Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2004). Articles>Communication>Business Communication>Language

Review: CEO-Speak: The Language of Corporate Leadership    

The Language of Corporate Leadership is a study of the written discourse of CEOs that is found in annual reports, corporate Web sites, congressional testimonies, and employee newsletters. The book contains 10 case studies of CEOs' writings from past and present megacorporations, including Enron, General Electric, Microsoft, Disney, and AOL. The organizations covered in the book represent both new and old economies and include two Canadian companies and a public-sector company. The authors, Joel Amernic and Russell Craig, are accounting and business professors and appropriately focus on accounting and financial reporting aspects of CEOs' written discourse.

Dave, Anish M. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2008). Articles>Reviews>Business Communication>Language

Crossing National and Corporate Cultures: Stages in Localizing a Pre-Production Meeting Report    

Localization includes translating, explaining, and adapting a document for use in a specific culture. This article presents the case of a form for reporting the findings and decisions of pre-production meetings held during development of electronic products. The need to localize such a document may seem less obvious or critical than the need for sales documents like manuals, but this case demonstrates the same cultural requirements and, furthermore, the requirements of corporate differences. To meet local needs, the comprehensive preparation that localization requires should follow specific methods in each step of a process corresponding to the general writing process, like the stages defined in common technical writing texts. The deliberate use of an effective writing process to localize documents will improve results.

Major, David L. and Akihiro Yoshida. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2007). Articles>Language>Localization>Business Communication

From a Wasteland of Words to Corporate Language  

In recent years, the subject of terminology and its significance to technical documentation has gained importance. Training and education are paying more and more attention to this area, and an increasing number of software companies are offering sophisticated solutions to give companies a technological tool for handling terms efficiently.

Schaefer, Gregor. tekom (2006). Articles>Language>Business Communication

Linguistic Politeness in Professional Prose    

Consonant with a trend toward investigating professional writing in naturalistic settings, this discourse-analytical study of a corpus of 'suggestion letters' written in a Big Eight accounting firm demonstrates how auditors use negative politeness strategies to meet the complex demands of potentially threatening interactional situations. The study substantiates Brown and Levinson's claim that politeness is a linguistic universal by showing that the same politeness strategies found in speech also occur in written communication. Analysis of negative message strategies in ten leading textbooks shows that business communication pedagogy needs to modify strictures on the use of passives, nominalizations, expletive constructions, and hedging particles in light of research on the exigencies of real-world linguistic interaction.

Hagge, John and Charles Kostelnick. Written Communication (1989). Articles>Language>Business Communication

Practical Tips for Language: The Ladder to the Top

We the Technical Editors are spared of one worry which our colleagues from journalism generally have: In our work we need not pay 'so much' attention to 'as much as possible' large number of editions. But the situation is different, if we--as is always the case--are to also look after the company's web presence. What is an edition in the context of printing is here the so-called 'page ranking' among the major search engines like Google and Yahoo. Many imagine that a listing in the hits lists depends on chance or, that it is mainly due to some technical means. That is all wrong: by employing some clever textual work the chances of web pages being found can be significantly increased. In reality, even elaborate techniques can lower the chances of hits: Frames, JavaScript and Flash Intros often derail the search engines. And the results may look all right, but regrettably the page will no longer be found.

Nickl, Markus. tekom (2006). Articles>Language>Editing>Business Communication

Stylistic Differences in Multilingual Administrative Forms: A Cross-Linguistic Characterization    

This article studies the stylistic variation in the design of administrative forms in three European countries--the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain-- through the linguistic analysis of a small corpus of multilingual administrative forms dealing with pension benefits and other kinds of allowances written in four different languages--English, Spanish, Italian, and German. The analysis included both monolingual administrative forms--written in English, Spanish, and Italian--and bilingual Italian/German and Italian/ English forms. The purpose of the study was to search for cross-linguistic regularities in the design of administrative forms which would enable their characterization as a genre, both in terms of its staging structure and of the linguistic and formatting features of the elements which configure it as such. The analysis performed on the small corpus yielded interesting stylistic differences and tendencies in the design of comparable administrative forms in the different countries, characterized by different socio-cultural backgrounds. It is suggested that these differences are a reflection of the social attitudes of the different administrations toward their citizens.

Lavid, Julia and Maite Taboada. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2004). Articles>Language>Business Communication>Forms