The Small Business Company

“Roger played fantastic,” commented Roger Federer’s opponent at a post-US Open tennis match press conference. “He served unbelievable.”

Yes, the adverb is on the endangered list, apparently destined for oblivion along with the semicolon and other finer points of English communication. Economists may have discredited the theory of wealth trickledown, but language trickledown is alive and well. Quotes from popular sports people, movie stars and rap artists today are sure to be widely imitated tomorrow in our media-obsessed age.

What does this mean for business?

There’s a special skill togaining and holding the attention of time-starved small business people who want ‘the guts’ served up quickly and accessibly (two adverbs snuck in there as a rear-guard action, in case you hadn’t noticed). Clear expression, short sentences and paragraphs, bullet points and subheadings are just some of the tactics we use. But could (or should) we take this even further? What is the future of business communications on the web?

The challenge for business writers is to meet the market. This means we need to listen up and keep up and perhaps not pass quick judgment – not always comfortable for this easily irritated pedant.

A fair portion of small business owners don’t care about the finer points of grammar and this reality has to be accepted. Money now comes in ‘bunches’. Why not, they ask? It works for bananas. People come in large ‘amounts’ or may become‘less’ if your customer service is poor. Fine. Websites need ‘populating’. Naturally. Is there any point in being a curmudgeon over mangled English?

It’s no longer a surprise that even editors of leading publications seem unaware that ‘disinterested’ means something quite different from‘uninterested’. Shrug.

The next generation of small business people, raised on texting and tweeting, will no doubt express themselves in even more startling ways.

Are you getting your message across?

It all goes back to writing for the market. That certainly doesn’t justify serving up mangled English, but it does mean writing in a way that will be read – and quickly understood – by all in your market.

The point of the quote at the beginning of this blog is that it comes from a respected tennis player speaking English as second language. Hundreds of millions may speak or understand English at some level, but not all that well. This is a factor you should consider in your marketing, brochures, website copy and promotional material.

There have been attempts to solve this communication challenge. Various forms of‘International English’ have emerged (Google the topic if you’re interested) but for two reasons, I favour Globish over its competitors.

First, Globish was conceived by a Frenchman, Jean-Paul Nerriere, rather than a native English speaker. That’s one edge: selling products around the globe taught Nerriere the difficulties of communicating clearly with others who also speak English as a second language. His solution is Globish (a tool rather than a language), featuring a 1,500-word vocabulary and simplified grammar.

Second, Monsieur Nerriere obligingly provides a free Globish Text Scanner that allows you to type or paste in sample text to see if it passes the Globish test. Try it! You may be as startled as I was to discover how much of your copy could be misunderstood (or simply opaque) to others.

If you’re trying to sell products worldwide, Globish compatibility or communicating in plain English could be important. It’s also possible you’re missing sales close to home. Most Anglo-speaking countries now have substantial immigrant communities. Are you confident the first generation of these immigrants can understand your product messages?

Finally, let’s not forget the huge generation of texters and tweeters presently gaining top business positions. Their vocabularies are shrinking, thanks (among other factors) to the need to compress messages. A vocabulary of 1,500 words may well become a mark of eloquence in the future, in which case we may all need Globish as a communication tool. It’s certainly worth a thought. FWIW I hope this hasn’t been TMI.

Tags: business writing, globish, language

This entry was posted on October 4, 2011 at 5:30 pm and is filed under All posts, Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.