circle back, socialize the deck, bandwidth, low-hanging fruit, operationalize, going forward, take this offline, right-size the team: pick any of these corporate jargon examples and each one has a shorter word sitting right next to it, and the reason the longer word wins in a draft is that it sounds like the writer belongs, which is what most business writing is quietly optimised for.
regulators worked this out decades ago and wrote the fix down. two american documents are still the most useful things ever published on the subject, and neither of them was written by a copywriter.
the federal law that made plain writing a requirement
the plain writing act of 2010 is public law 111-274, and it defines plain writing as writing that is clear, concise, well-organized, and follows other best practices appropriate to the subject or field and intended audience. that definition is doing something sneaky. it never lists a banned word. it defines good writing entirely by whether the audience gets it.
the deadlines were real. agencies had nine months from enactment to train staff and name a senior official responsible for plain writing, and one year to use plain writing in every covered document they issue or substantially revise. the federal digital guidance describes the same law as having established the requirement that content for the public is written for its specific audience. a government decided its own prose was bad enough to legislate against. that is the level of institutional embarrassment we are dealing with.
the word swaps the sec wrote down in 1998
twelve years earlier the securities and exchange commission published a plain english handbook for people writing prospectuses, and it is blunter than any style guide you will get from a marketing team. it tells writers to use end instead of terminate, explain instead of elucidate, and use instead of utilize, and adds the general rule underneath: when a shorter, simpler synonym exists, use it.
utilize is the purest example of the species. it means use. it has always meant use. it survives because three extra syllables read as expertise to a nervous writer, and because nobody in the approval chain will ever be blamed for it.
the handbook also lists what its authors kept finding in real filings: long sentences, passive voice, weak verbs, superfluous words, legal and financial jargon, numerous defined terms, abstract words, unnecessary details, and unreadable design and layout. jargon is one item on a list of nine. the other eight travel with it, which is why swapping single words rarely rescues a bad paragraph.
rule 421(d) turned some of this into an obligation. not a suggestion from an editor. a rule, attached to a document people can be sued over.
warren e. buffett wrote the preface.
lawyerisms and the legal smell
the handbook quotes richard c. wydick's plain english for lawyers on a subspecies worth knowing by name: lawyerisms, words that sound legal without doing any legal work.
legal smell is the phrase to keep. it generalises perfectly. consulting smell is alignment, workstream, capability, maturity model. startup smell is ship, velocity, north star metric, ruthless prioritisation. every industry has a scent gland and every one of them produces words that signal membership while carrying no cargo. this is roughly what corpo speak is: vocabulary chosen for what it proves about the speaker rather than for what it tells the listener.
the test is mechanical. delete the word. if the sentence still says the same thing, the word was smell.
the jargon that hides who decided
not all of it is decorative.
right-sizing, restructuring, a reduction in force and a role being made redundant all describe one event: a named executive fired named people. note the grammar. nobody fires anyone. the role becomes redundant, apparently on its own, the way weather happens. synergies are realised, decisions are taken, mistakes were made. the passive voice and the abstract noun are doing the same job the euphemism is doing, which is why the sec handbook lists passive voice and abstract words right alongside jargon, as one connected failure.
when you rewrite this kind of sentence, put the human back first and watch what happens to the meaning. we are right-sizing the organisation becomes we are cutting 40 jobs, and suddenly the sentence has a number in it, and the number is checkable, and that is precisely why the original was written the other way.
one sentence, rewritten
the handbook's own before-and-after is the best worked example in print. the plain english rewrite the sec offers: you should rely only on the information contained in this document or that we have referred you to. we have not authorized anyone to provide you with information that is different.
fifty-four words down to twenty-eight. the rewrite uses everyday words, short sentences, active voice, regular print, and pronouns that speak to the reader directly. what was lost was the tone that said a lawyer looked at this.
so when you catch yourself reaching for a phrase like operationalize the learnings, run the two tests the regulators already ran for you. is there a shorter synonym, and does the sentence name whoever did the thing? in the opening list, circle back becomes reply, bandwidth becomes time, and take this offline becomes let's talk after the meeting.