Talk Normal Quotes

“In the preface to The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins describes how he refines his writing by asking his wife, the actor Lalla Ward, to read his words aloud to him ‘so I could apprehend very directly how it might seem to a reader other than myself… I recommend the technique to other authors, but I must warn that for best results the reader must be a professional actor, with voice and ear sensitively tuned to the music of language’, he says.
You’d have to have a heart of stone not to see the amusement value of Professor Dawkins – who I think is a terrific writer – listening to his wife declaim all 420 pages of his book, maybe from a little lectern in his front room. And she did the whole book twice, he explains. She must love him very much.
Dawkins’ advice to marry an actor so that he or she can read your work to you might seem impractical, especially to your current spouse, but Dawkins has a point – which his prose reinforces. You might disagree with his concept of a godless universe, but if you have read The God Delusion you wouldn’t say that he expresses himself with anything less than complete clarity. You can disagree with him because you know exactly what he’s thinking.”
― Tim Phillips, Talk Normal: Stop the Business Speak, Jargon and Waffle

“I’m constantly contacted by amateur grammarians who want me to post something about the abuse of dangling modifiers. I don’t do this because I don’t really know what a dangling modifier is. I could look it up on Wikipedia and pretend that I know what I’m talking about but that would mean I was trying to sound clever for no reason (see above).
We need to think clearly to write clearly, not swallow a book about grammar. I edit some terrible articles. The first thought is that there’s a problem with the grammar: then when you fix the grammar you often find that there isn’t a clear train of thought underlying what they wrote. That’s the problem, not the dangling modifier.”
― Tim Phillips, Talk Normal: Stop the Business Speak, Jargon and Waffle

“When I started as a journalist the first company I worked for had an old newspaper man called Harold who ruled the newsroom. He was called chief sub-editor – the ‘sub’ is the person who fixes your mistakes before they go into the newspaper or magazine – although it was inconceivable that anyone could have worked under him.
Every morning he would arrive at 4 am and edit all the copy, looking for these mistakes, and a thousand more that he had internalised in the 50 years to that date. If you made unnecessary errors, he’d call you in to his cubbyhole and shout at you in front of your mates, while you stared at his one remaining front tooth as it wobbled precariously.”
― Tim Phillips, Talk Normal: Stop the Business Speak, Jargon and Waffle

“Work/life balance
We’re not in the office to enjoy ourselves. This is abundantly clear. The Japanese even have a special word for suicide from overwork: they call it karoshi. In the year 2000, 33,000 people committed karoshi.”
― Tim Phillips, Talk Normal: Stop the Business Speak, Jargon and Waffle

“I think what’s occurring is a stealthy rebranding: the word ‘problem’ has become too emotionally loaded to be uttered in polite company in case we think bad things about the companies responsible. So software bugs are now issues rather than problems, even if they stop our computers working and ruin our day.
Or, for my CEO, the bug is an opportunity. He was in the software business, and the only opportunity a broken computer gives you is the opportunity to wait for tech support to call back.
We now have ‘performance issues’ with staff who fall asleep on their keyboard, or ‘brand issues’ with companies that nobody likes, or, worst of all, ‘balance sheet issues’, as described by Lehman Brothers, shortly before it ceased to be Lehman Brothers. At least they didn’t call it a ‘balance sheet opportunity’, though I bet someone suggested it.
Rule of thumb on issues: it doesn’t matter whether your company admits to balance sheet issues or problems, it still might be time to send out your CV.”
― Tim Phillips, Talk Normal: Stop the Business Speak, Jargon and Waffle