Communicating, with the “Write Stuff”

The angular figure of our senior underwriting manager emerged from the elevator facing me, and, as usual, Judy’s face was a mirror of her inner feelings. It was also quite clear that these feelings were not too positive.

She grunted a perfunctory greeting to me. We walked out of our company’s front doors and stood together on the sidewalk. In a moment or two the Branch Manager of our downtown branch office, Fred Wilson, would arrive in his car to take us to the semi-annual meeting of our Broker Liaison Group. This meeting was always held “off site” at a local hotel, so that our out-of-town brokers could have a comfortable place to stay overnight. As our company’s senior marketing representative, my job would be to bring our brokers up-to-date on some of the new programs we had under way. En-route to the hotel, we were going to pick up two of our lead brokers, Bob and Harry.

‘Tough day?” I asked as gently as I could, and Judy treated me to a deep frown. “You could say that, Dave,” she sighed. As she did, she reached into her briefcase. She extracted a long sheet of continuous-print computer paper, folded it one section and jabbed her finger at it. “Enough to make a stone weep,” she grumbled, handing the paper over to me. “I was scanning through the E-mail messages my underwriters send to our brokers, and I spotted this one. I printed up this hard copy because I mean to put this mess down in front of that underwriter and let him in on a little secret: this is lousy communication!”

Judy had a reputation in our company as an excellent communicator who expressed herself well and expected others to do the same. I lifted the crumpled section of paper, smoothed it out, and read the underwriter’s message aloud:

“I am in receipt of your communication of September 7th in connection with our office’s handling of the McDermott Manufacturing situation and despite the fact that our underwriting team is at this point in time managing and processing in excess of 300 active files I would like to point out that your request was accommodated well within the normal time parameters allowed for this type of business transaction and in addition was executed with extreme accuracy.”

I was about to comment when Fred’s car slid up to the sidewalk beside us. We climbed into the back seat and headed across town. In the rearview mirror I saw Fred’s eyes scan us both quickly. They came to rest on Judy, who had tossed her briefcase at her feet and was staring moodily out at the traffic. “Well, you two,” Fred said cheerfully, “I trust you’re in fighting form. All briefed up on our marketing initiatives, Dave?” He coughed gently. “Ready to be kind and considerate to all our nice brokers, Judy?” I caught his quick wink in my direction.

“Well,” I said quickly, “I think we’re up for it. But Judy is really ticked off at an E-mail letter one of her crew sent to a broker.” I read the offending letter out loud. Fred pulled up at a stoplight as I finished reading. “Hmm,” he said quietly. “It is a bit stuffy, isn’t it?”

“It certainly is!” Judy said heatedly. “It comes across as pompous and defensive. Full of puffed-up phrases. And, — it’s one great long sentence without any punctuation in sight!”

As he pulled away from the stoplight, Fred gave a small smile. “How would you have worded it?” Judy looked over at me and flipped her right hand over. “Turn that sheet over, Dave,” she said. “I already re-wrote it in plain English.” I turned the printout over and read out Judy’s neat handwriting:

“I have your September 7 letter about McDermott Manufacturing. We have a 300-file backlog right now, but I’m happy to tell you that your request was handled accurately, and on schedule.”

I saw Fred’s head nod quickly. “Uh-huh,” he agreed. “That’s better. Cuts out all that excess verbiage but gets your point across in a more positive way.” Judy sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Why do people work at making things more complicated instead of keeping them simple? They say ‘in receipt of’ when they should say ‘have.’ They say ‘in connection with’ when they should just say ‘about.’ They write down ‘despite the fact that’ when they mean ‘although.’ They also lard up their letters with fancy-sounding phrases like ‘at this point in time’ when ‘now’ says it a whole lot better.”

As she finished speaking, Fred pulled in to the side of the road beside two familiar figures standing on the sidewalk. They were Bob, who ran a successful midtown brokerage, and Harry, whose suburban brokerage was one of our company’s best producers. Bob slid into the front seat and Harry joined Judy and me in the back. Greetings were exchanged all round.

“Watch out what you say, you two,” Fred said with a chuckle as we threaded our way back into the traffic stream. “Judy here is on the warpath today against bad business writing.” Bob laughed and made a face. “Been reading my correspondence, have you?” Beside us, Harry dropped his valise on the car floor and turned to Judy. “It’s about time someone got on the warpath about that,” he said. “We’re surrounded by lousy writing these days!” He shook his head. “Last month a company CEO wrote to me to explain a figure I had questioned in their results. He said, and I quote: ‘that figure was a negative increase of sixty thousand dollars.’ In other words, he meant a sixty thousand dollar loss!”

“Weasel wording I call it,” Fred grunted. “There are lots of examples around these days. For instance, nobody is fired any more — they’re de-hired. People don’t meet, they ‘interface’. Nobody just talks. They ‘dialogue’. Things don’t work. Oh no, — they’re ‘viable’. And of course, nothing just grows any more. Nowadays it ‘maximizes’.”

From the front seat of the car, broker Bob groaned as he read our underwriter’s E-mail. “Why do people insist on “tarting up” letters with tired old cliches?” he said to no one in particular. You see this kind of stuff every day. They write ‘acknowledge receipt of’ instead of the clear and direct ‘got.’ They stick in “due to the fact that’ when ‘because’ is simpler and clearer. And instead of ‘in the event that’, why not just say ‘if’?”

“I can add to that list,” I interjected. “People write ‘for the purpose of’ instead of the much more simple word ‘to’. They say ‘in the very near future’ instead of ‘soon’; ‘please feel free to’ rather than just ‘please’, and there’s that old favorite, ‘in the amount of’ instead of just ‘for’.”

“Right on!” Judy said vehemently, leaning forward. “You know, some time ago I read that the average business letter costs between thirty and seventy-five dollars, when all costs are factored in. All the more reason to apply the KISS formula: keep it simple, stupid.”

Beside me I could see Harry’s head bobbing in agreement. “I read that same story on business letter costs, and it made me think. I began to review all our office correspondence. I can tell you — it wasn’t that good! So, last year I began to rotate everyone in my office to a better business writing course that is staged at our local technical college…”

“Great idea, Harry!” Judy said enthusiastically. “I’ll bet the letters and E-mails coming out of your office have shown a big improvement.” Harry nodded. “They have. I know they have, because I read through our client letter files as often as I can.” He smiled. Among the things the better business writing course cured were those crazy redundancies, like ‘absolutely perfect’ instead of just ‘perfect’. I mean, if something’s perfect, it can’t be any more perfect…”

“Not unless you’re talking about me, of course!” Bob said with a laugh, then let his face grow serious. “Actually, I saw one of those dopey double-words just yesterday. One of my other companies sent me details of a new marketing strategy which they had called their ‘Advance Plan’.” He snorted. “I mean, a plan is something you prepare in advance anyway, isn’t it?” I chuckled in agreement. “And how about ‘close proximity’? Don’t they mean ‘near’? Or ‘final outcome’ instead of just ‘outcome’. Then there’s that golden oldie ‘goals and objectives’ when ‘goals’ is all you really need.”

“You know what?” Fred said a s we turned a corner. “I seem to be wading through more and more endless E-mails and Memos these days. You know the kind. They consist of one gigantic sentence that goes on and on with no punctuation at all. Frankly, I think E-mail correspondence is partly to blame. People don’t really write letters any more. They simply sit down at a terminal, pour their thoughts out on to the computer screen, don’t bother to use “Spell Check” or even to re-read their message, before they hit the ‘Send” button. Result? Word diarrhea.”

Good point,” Harry agreed. “I was always taught that each paragraph should be restricted to one thought, and that a sentence should be between seventeen and twenty-two words – no longer.”

“You’re absolutely right!” Judy said forcefully. “That’s one of my better business writing rules.” Bob swiveled around again on the front seat. “Hey, Judy, you’ve got a captive audience here. Why don’t you lay your rules on us?” Judy’s sober face broke into a smile. “I thought you’d never ask,” she said, with her hand over her heart. Then she held up her right hand and spread the fingers apart. “Five simple rules. One: be brief and be clear — the “KISS” formula. Two: write as you normally talk, in terms your reader will understand. Three: never use the passive when you can use the active…”

Noticing a quick frown flit across Harry’s face, Judy added: “In other words, instead of saying ‘It has been discovered that an underwriting mistake occurred’, say ‘we found a mistake in our underwriting.’ Four: never use a figure of speech you see or hear every day. And five: when in doubt, leave it out.”

“Not bad at all,” Harry said with a emphatic nod. “You just forgot one thing.” In response, Judy asked, “what’s that?” Harry replied with, “we need another rule that makes it a criminal offence in our business to use any more of those acronyms we love to throw around. You know — P and C, PL and PD, RIMS, FIIC and…”

“Please!” I interrupted, throwing up my hands in mock horror. “We need these! They’re part of the special insurance language that only those of us in the business can speak. I mean, if someone overheard us saying ‘

A VP from IBC and two senior CEOs with IBAC and RIBO to discuss the PR value of rewarding new FIICs in the P and C industry…well, they might have trouble figuring it all out. Our secrets would be safe.”

A chorus of hoots filled the car as the familiar shape of the hotel came into view. Fred turned left into the driveway and pulled up to the front entrance. “Here we are, ‘wordmeisters’,” he said, then with a sly chuckle, added: “We had to drive down the parkway so we could park on the driveway.”

Judy let out a groan, but wasn’t to be outdone. “All right, Fred,” she replied with a twinkle in her eye. “The same way you fill out a form by filling it in, and your alarm clock goes on when it goes off.”

We picked up our briefcases and got out of the car. Bob held open the door to the hotel. “Just don’t forget,” he said with a grin, “that in our business a house can simultaneously burn up and burn down.”

“Oh, we’re sharp today,” Fred laughed as he led the way forward. “This could be a lively meeting!”