Ten ways to stop that verbose exec from mangling your copy

Lately, I’ve been hosting business English courses for corporate communicators at a large corporation. By far the most frequent question I get asked is this: “How do I stop my manager/client/stakeholder from turning my writing into gobbledygook?”. Having worked as an editor in the comms department of a large investment bank, I empathise completely. There’s nothing worse than some verbose exec “improving” your finely crafted copy by inserting references to “delivering key learnings”, “driving employee integration strategies” and “interfacing holistically with clients” into your work.

I think there are two aspects to successfully managing your clients: getting the process right and knowing how to navigate the politics. Here, I offer my tips on the first of the two Ps - process. Later this week, I’ll tackle the politics.

1. Don't ask for "feedback"

“Feedback” is a broad concept meaning different things to different people. One editor might check for grammar and spelling. Another might be concerned with how “on-brand” the story is. Yet another will want to rephrase your writing to incorporate words like “solutions”, “impacted on” and “going forward” simply because your original wasn’t “corporate enough”.

So instead of asking for feedback, ask if there’s anything in the piece that would cause a problem if it were published. That limits your exec to pointing out inaccuracies (misspelled names, incorrect job titles, out-of-date information etc) and alerting you to anything that’s sensitive, confidential or embargoed.

2. Pick up the phone

There’s nothing more soul destroying than receiving an email returning your copy in unrecognisable form (especially if the subject of said email is “Further amendmants” - true story).

Next time, get your exec to call you with their feedback. That way, the editing process becomes a discussion between two equals, rather than an ego-crushing drama in which your role is to accept their permission to publish.

3. Avoid tracked changes

It’s particularly humiliating when your exec’s contempt for your copy is broadcast in red underline and numerous boxes marked “Deleted”. If you can, PDF your document before you send it so they’re forced to talk to you about any changes.

4. Be ruthless with word count

In my experience, most examples of corporate writing are far, far too long. So lay down some rules for word count - and stick to them. For example, insist that all stories on the intranet must be no longer than 200 words (“not my fault, gov, it’s the technology, innit?”).

“Delivering holistic operational synergies across the organisation” uses up a lot more words than “working together”. So if that’s really how they want to put it, then the essential paragraph on “leveraging engagement to drive cost-efficiencies” will have to go, won’t it?.

Which is it to be? Or shall we just say both of them my way?

5. Don’t budge on sentence length

Similarly, insist that any sentence longer than 24 must be cut - and, again, don’t budge. Put these rules in your company style guide - so you can wave them at your verbose exec. Don’t have a style guide? Create one.

6. Throw some stats at them

Another weapon to throw at your verbose exec is the readability tool in Word. I recently heard of one communicator who gave scientific proof that his original was better than the version that had been edited by the company CEO - simply by pointing out differences in the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease figure. The CEO, being a numbers type of guy as most are, backed down immediately.

7. Have a list of banned words

One of my greatest achievements is that I worked in the marketing department of an investment bank for two years and never once used the word “leverage”, except in its technical, financial sense.

There’s a real discipline from having a list of banned words on your desk - it stops you being lulled, by repeated exposure, into thinking “delivery framework”, “best-practice solutions” and “going forward” are acceptable uses of the English language.

8. Do an audit

This was an idea that a participant on one of my writing courses came up with and I love it. Like me, he found it alarming that one of his colleagues regularly dealt with documents labelled intranet_story_v17.doc and the like.

His suggestion was to put version one next to version 17 and judge if the latter really was 17 times (and who knows how many hours) better than the first. Ask colleagues, including your verbose exec, what they think.

Calling the review an “audit” is particularly powerful if you’re dealing with business types, implying as it does that it will provide hard numbers to save the company both money and time.

9. Standardise the brief

Every memo, intranet update or article in the staff magazine should be published for a reason - and not just as a way of bigging up someone senior for fulfilling their objectives for the year.

When researching your piece, create a briefing form that forces your client to answer the following questions:

Who is your reader? What do you want the reader to do or know as a result of this communication? What information must the reader have to achieve this? (All else is irrelevant.) What are the consequences for the business if we don’t publish?

This last question is particularly powerful. If verbose exec can’t articulate a good business case for publishing (or for including six paragraphs on how she’s “delivering transformational change across the business - blah, blah, blah”), then she needs to rethink.

Remember, it’s your job to help your verbose exec understand the difference between what she wants to say and what your readers need to hear.

10. Build a scrapbook of good examples

At one business English course I ran, a participant said she’d been told that her conversational style wasn’t suitable for a business audience. Her verbose exec had figured that writing that’s easy to understand is simplistic and patronising.

My advice in this situation? Point them to business publications like the FT and The Economist, which never assume that even their in-the-know readers understand specialist financial and economics terms.

And show them Warren Buffett’s letters in Berkshire Hathaway’s annual reports. If clear, simple prose works for the world’s greatest investor, what could it do for your verbose exec?

Does your process allow you to rein in overenthusiastic editors? Share any tips and ideas below.

Or does your comms team struggle to write clear, compelling copy? Contact us on + 44 208 127 1477 to discuss running a business writing course at your company.