[Gllug] Star Office/ Open Office.org

[Jack Bertram]

* Rev Simon Rumble <simon at rumble.net> [031106 08:36]:
> On Thu 06 Nov, Nix bloviated thus:
> > (Corporatespeak gets complaints about
> > the passive voice --- what's wrong with the passive voice? --- and
> > overlong sentences.)
> 
> The passive voice is almost always a more complicated way of saying
> things.
> 
> Which is clearer:
> The cat sat on the mat.
> The mat was sat on by the cat.

Although (a) I agree with you in general and (b) this is a particularly
strong example, there are cases where you use the passive voice in order
to bring the object to the front of the sentence, where it is more
prominent.  For example:

A gunman who claimed to be under the influence of paranormal delusions
shot Mr Gubbins. 

Mr Gubbins was shot by a gunman...

It's frequently used in business memos/presentations for this purpose.

> Of course, many people who receive MBAs think corporate-speak means
> making yourself sound important, clever and complicated.  They end up
> writing everything in complicated passive voice and do really
> ridiculous things like turn innocent nouns into verbs ("incentivize",
> "productize" et al).

It's true to say that a lot of business people (both those with and
without MBAs) use poor language but I don't think it's because they
think it makes themselves sound better; I think it's because they don't
know how to write simple prose.  After all, they're trained to make
commercial decisions, not to write well.

And verb-nouns are repulsive, but they do have the benefit of taking one
word to say what would otherwise take 2 or 3 - which can make the
difference between a CEO reading your bullet point or not reading it.

If I were feeling inflammatory, I'd say that "technical" types think
that using lots of technical terms means making themselves more
important and complicated.  I don't think having a go at MBAs is
particularly fair or justified - there are poor communicators in all
walks of business.  And there are excellent communicators in all
disciplines as well.

jack

-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug