5
MINUTE MEMO
JANUARY 2005
From Newspeak to Webspeak
“Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad
way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it…It
follows that a struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring
candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes.” George Orwell
Let me start with an apologetic warning:
significant parts of this memo are
unreadable. But that’s the point.
company has a solution. The phrase
‘leading provider of compliance solutions’
pretty much covers the territory.
Spend any time on a tech company
website, and you will know less about its
business than you’ll get from reading its
‘phone number. More specifically, spend
three weeks researching competitors for a
client (you can tell that there’s painful
experience at the root of this memo) and
you’ll reach the conclusion that 99% of
websites are dreadful - mind-numbingly,
eye-wateringly dreadful.
A slight exaggeration, perhaps, but Orwell’s
principle of imitation certainly holds true. It’s
as if the companies in question have yet to
work out what they do, and so cut and paste
from each other, hunting for the answer.
George Orwell never surfed the web, and
when he wrote ‘Politics and the English
Language’ in 1946, he had much bigger
issues than homepage design in mind. But
so much of what he said addresses the
core malaise in communication today, and
is well worth web-creators heeding.
http://eserver.org/langs/politics-englishlanguage.txt
Orwell says: Modern English is full of bad
habits, which spread by imitation.
The first lesson of all tech websites is that
they all say the same thing; doesn’t matter
what the sector, segment or niche, the
content is identical. Every company is a
leader in its field. Every company wants
to help its customers be compliant. Every
www.optimentum.com
Prose consists of phrases tacked together
like sections of a prefabricated henhouse.
Orwell lists four tricks that writers use to
dodge the effort of writing clearly. Reading
websites, designers and writers seem to
have taken them to heart:
Dying adjectives: World-class, seamless,
agile, flexible and integrated – describers
that are now completely stripped of
meaning. We all use them because…well,
we all use them. Here’s the first sentence
from Whale Communications’ home page:
‘the established leader in flexible class
SSL VPN solutions.’ As Orwell might say,
all companies are leading, but some are
more leading than others.
(The examples I use in this memo are not
especially bad – there are a LOT worse
out there – but they are good illustrations
of the syndromes from which we all suffer.
A different week would have brought a
different list.)
Tel: +44 (0) 77 8686 2040
Verbal false limbs: these pad each
sentence with extra syllables, which give it
the appearance of symmetry. Viewlocity
describes itself as ‘the global leading
provider of visibility, event management,
and optimization software for the adaptive
supply chain.’ Consultant group Forrester
clarifies this by saying the company
‘exhibits overall leadership in both current
offering and product strategy because of
the ease of integration, personalized event
management and process synchronization
strategy.’
Read that aloud: it has rhythm, it has
cadence, and it is as cloudy as a
Manchester sky.
Pretentious diction: words are used to
dress up simple statements and give an
air of scientific impartiality. Take a deep
breath and try Damovo’s opening
sentence about its ‘business
communications for biometrics, data and
converged networks, voice enabled and
mobile solutions, enterprise relationship
management, e-collaborations and
managed services.’ If this is the elevator
pitch, then I hope its sales people meet in
very tall buildings.
Meaningless words: it is normal to come
across long passages that are completely
lacking in meaning. Web writers have
anaesthetised certain words, so that they
are now completely inactive; platform,
unprecedented, convergent, strategic,
performance, migration, implementation,
verification, partnership, solution.
Why does this happen? Orwell puts his
finger on the cause: The attraction of writing
this way is that it is easy. It is easier, even
quicker, once you have the habit. Just like
PolyCertain Systems, that claims ‘to provide
platform independent solutions, which
integrate adaptive data warehousing
www.optimentum.com
methodologies with mission-critical process
efficiencies, to fully extend the enterprise’.
Convinced? Don’t be - I just made it up.
Here’s some timeless advice for anyone
creating the content of a website: In every
sentence and every page that you write, ask
yourself Orwell’s four questions:
1 What am I trying to say?
2 What words will express it?
3 What image or idea will make it clearer?
4 Is it fresh enough to have an effect?
This is not about clear writing for its own sake;
this is about persuading prospects and
connecting with customers.
It’s about getting to the heart of even the most
complex technology and expressing it in a
direct, compelling way.
Above all, it’s about finding the company’s
voice. People do business with people – and
yet so many sites ‘speak’ in a standardized
technomumble that removes all sense of
humanity. Then CEOs wonder why they aren’t
being heard above the market din.
In ‘1984’ the authorities created Newspeak,
an official language that narrowed the range of
thought and understanding. In honour of its
author, Optimentum is creating the ‘Orwells’, a
new award for Webspeak. It will go to the
most confusing, pretentious, vague, poorlythought language that appears on a website.
Please send your nominations to the email
address that follow. The winners will be
announced in May. mail@optimentum.com.
And to make sure that your company doesn’t
receive an award, here’s Orwell’s final piece of
advice: What is above all needed is to let the
meaning choose the word, and not the other
way around.
PAUL RUTHERFORD
Tel: +44 (0) 77 8686 2040
© Optimentum 2004