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A memo complains that the unfortunate outcome of some project “was reasonably unexpected.” Reasonably? How unexpected is that? Or does the writer mean that a reasonable person would not have expected such an outcome at all? Depending on the intention, it would be a lot less vague to write:

Few of us expected this outcome.

Or,

Although I didn’t expect this outcome, it didn’t come as a complete surprise.

State your meaning precisely:

Vague Precise

Very overspent Overspent by $10,000

Slightly behind schedule One day late

Some authorities advise weeding out adjectives and adverbs as a matter of principle. We don’t. Adjectives and adverbs are parts of speech, often indispensable to precise expression. But we do distinguish between lazy ones and vigorous ones. The lazy ones are so overused in some contexts that they have become clichés:

Very good Great success

Awfully nice Richly deserved

Basically accurate Vitally important

By contrast, vigorous adjectives and adverbs sharpen your point:

Instantly accepted Tiny raise

Rudely turned down Moist handshake

Short meeting Tiresome speech

Crisp presentation Black coffee

Baffling instructions Lucid recommendation

Choose adjectives and adverbs that make your meaning more precise. Do not use them as mere exclamation points.

5. Use down-to-earth language

The pervasive use of professional jargon arises more out of fear than arrogance, hypothesizes Harvard paleontologist Dr. Stephan Jay Gould, author of nineteen books. “Most young scholars slip into this jargon because they are afraid that, if they don’t, their mentors or the people who promote them won’t think they are serious. I can’t believe that anyone would want to write that way.”

Avoid technical or business jargon. There is always a simple, down-to-earth word that says the same thing as the showoff fad word or vague abstraction. A leading offender in recent years is “proactive” — supposedly indicating the opposite of “reactive.” What’s wrong with “active,” a real word? Or, for more emphasis, “take the initiative.”

Then there’s “off-line,” as in “Let’s go off-line on that subject.” What they mean is, “Let’s discuss that separately, outside the meeting.” “Reengineering” seems to be here to stay — in contexts that have nothing to do with engineers. Anything that’s changed in any way is likely to be described as “reengineered.” We might even have said, without raising eyebrows in trendy circles, that we “reengineered” this book. What we did say — that we expanded the book and updated it — may stir you less but tells you more.

The use of this kind of language became the target of an office game called Buzzword Bingo. The game is played in meeting rooms across the country. Players surreptitiously track the jargon spouted by their bosses, hoping to be the first in the room to fill out a bingo-like card listing the company’s prevailing buzzwords. A discreet cough, rather than a shout of Bingo!, announces the winner.

We often urge people to write the way they talk. But developments like Buzzword Bingo indicate a perverse trend: More and more people in business seem to be talking the way they write. In the box on the next page, there are some words and phrases that might appear on Buzzword Bingo cards, followed by down-to-earth alternatives.

Buzzword Down-to-earth English

To interface Discuss, meet, work with

To impact To affect, to do to

Modality Style, method

Resource constrained Not enough people (or money)

Incent Motivate

Skill set Skills, abilities

Solution set Solutions

Resultful Effective, achieve results

Meaningful Real, actual, tangible

Judgmentally I think

Net net Conclusion

Suboptimal Less than ideal

Push the envelope Test the limits

Scope down (from microscope) Look at more closely

Scope out (from telescope) Take a long view

Workshopping Trying out, working on

NOTE: Popular usage has confused parameters with perimeter. If you mean limits, say limits.

What’s wrong with jargon like this becomes obvious when it comes at you in clusters,