First Draft #10: a newsletter on public language
Authenticity, advertising standards and a new kind of sadness
Against authenticity
Authentic is one of those words that is hard to oppose. Whoever wants to be inauthentic? That inauthenticity is not a virtue anyone would seek is the tip-off to the fact the idea offers less than it seems. Corporate leaders love the idea of being authentic. In the distant days when there were conferences, it was hard to leave the house without falling into a gathering on authentic leadership. Let’s hope none of that comes back. Let’s call time on authenticity.
In the philosophical literature, from where the usage is borrowed, authenticity has a precise sense of knowing oneself and being in control of one’s life. The idea really took off in the business world after the publication of Bill George’s Authentic Leadership in 2003. But a quick survey of uses of the word reveals nobody quite knows what it means. The term “authentic” refers to leadership that is inspiring, a good way of motivating others or a leader who is aware of his or her strengths and weaknesses. It can mean someone who is keen to redeem a promise, who acts with integrity, is open emotionally, who accepts criticism and who holds true to his or her stated values. In other words, there is no authentic meaning left.
There is no need for all this vague guff. It is easy enough to specify the attributes of a good leader. They need clarity, intelligence and rigour. Your “authentic self” will only coincide with being a good leader if you exhibit these virtues. But it is the clarity, the intelligence and the rigour which count, not the apparent authenticity.
There is one last thought that should kill off this bad idea for good. Think of all the tyrants, in both politics and business, whose style of leadership is to command others to do as they say. Authentic leadership of this type is awful. Yet tyrants really are true to their natures. And that is easy to oppose. @PhilipJCollins1
The history and future of corporate language is the subject of Phil’s new book. To Be Clear, A Style Guide For Business Writing, published by Quercus, is out now.
“No one can write in advertising agencies any more”
“People who write well, think well,” said David Ogilvy in 1982, before enumerating his ten (excellent) rules for good writing. At Ogilvy and Mather, his advertising agency, “the better you write, the higher you go.” If the marketing boss of Lloyds bank, Richard Warren, is anything to go by, those days are long gone. “No one can write in advertising agencies any more,” he lamented earlier this year.
If it is true, it is a tragedy. The copywriting departments of advertising agencies have been proving grounds for some of the greatest writers of the past hundred years. Dorothy L Sayers wrote wonderful Guinness adverts. Salman Rushdie christened Fresh Cream Cakes "naughty but nice". Fay Weldon told us to "go to work on an egg" and I do. The list goes on: Graham Greene, Don De Lillo, James Patterson, Marlon James, Scott Fitzgerald, and Joseph Heller all wrote adverts as well as novels.
Richard Warren of Lloyds has apparently decided to move most of his brand's copywriting in-house. As pens for hire, I must protest that he has found the wrong solution to the right problem. He should simply have come to the place that really cares about great writing... @joshuahwilliams
Jargon busters: Key
The 2019 Huawei annual report claims that “Huawei is committed to long-term investment in key technologies while actively contributing to standardization”. This is an almost meaningless sentence which also raises the question of how many things can be key all at once. Three at most, and that is pushing it. If there are three or fewer key points you could just make them. The very fact that you have selected these points and not some others releases you from the obligation of describing them as key, a useful word that can be reserved for turning locks or for a geographical location in Florida. @PhilipJCollins1
From Phil’s new book, To Be Clear, A Style Guide for Business Writing. More info here.
Jargon busters: Harnessing
Recently spotted on LinkedIn: “I believe in harnessing the power of communications to drive positive change”. If you doubt LinkedIn is a jargon Wild West, consider how much “harnessing” goes on there. Talent. Creativity. The power of communications. All are being relentlessly harnessed by the frontiersmen of corporate nonsense. Like “utilise” and “leverage”, “harness” can almost always be replaced by simple, unpretentious “use”. So unless you’re actually a cowboy (or abseiler) stop using it. @AlexDymoke
Peculiar word of the month: Involution
Foreign words reveal shades of sadness English can only grasp at. In German “weltschmerz”, translated as “world pain”, captures the sorrowful chasm between ideal and real. Portuguese has “saudade”, a kind of deep melancholic longing or loss. The French have “ennui”.
To this list can be added “neijuan”, used by Chinese young people to describe lives weighed down by constant rewardless pressure. Anglicised as “involution”, it consists of the Chinese characters for “inside” and “rolling”, suggesting something turning in on itself. An “endless cycle of self-flagellation” says Oxford University anthropologist Xiang Biao.
Involution became a meme on Chinese social media last year after a student was pictured using a laptop while cycling. The image went viral, commentators decried an “involuted generation” and the word became shorthand for modern China’s distinctive brand of urban unhappiness; unhappiness caused by academic competitiveness and a soul crushing rat race.
China’s involuted young are rediscovering Marxist theory. Message boards overflow with memes about worker exploitation. The New Yorker reports reading groups devoted to Das Kapital. Biao links involution to Confucianism’s emphasis on conformity and education, but says it is really a malady born of individualism. China’s elite young see the world within their grasp. Neijuan is what happens when they realise, despite giving everything, it isn’t. @AlexDymoke
Language and beyond
The first major interview with legendary Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder has some brilliant advice, which we endorse: “Since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun, I always write my scripts all the way through as fast as I can, the first day, if possible, putting in crap jokes and pattern dialogue—“Homer, I don’t want you to do that.” “Then I won’t do it.” Then the next day, when I get up, the script’s been written. It’s lousy, but it’s a script. The hard part is done. It’s like a crappy little elf has snuck into my office and badly done all my work for me, and then left with a tip of his crappy hat. All I have to do from that point on is fix it.”
In this brilliant long read for the Atlantic, journalist Anshell Pfeffer goes inside Israel’s iron dome.
“It is a life enhancing thing that languages mutate. But I wonder if English has ever been as restlessly protean as it is now.” English is under attack from bullshit says Janan Ganesh in his FT column.
“People live by narrative...Human beings are creatures of the imagination.” One of many revealing Johnson quotes in Tom McTague’s Atlantic profile.
Ross Douthat on how the American Right is rummaging around Michel Foucault’s toolbox.
How poorly translated medical jargon makes disparities in global health provision worse - and how one enterprising young medical student is battling for clarity.
Food writer and campaigner Jack Monroe on the strangely impenetrable language of bills.
From the intro of Ezra Klein’s new interview with Obama, which you can listen to here: “He accomplished one of the most remarkable acts of political persuasion in American history, convincing the country to vote, twice, for a liberal Black man named Barack Hussein Obama during the era of the war on terror. But he left behind a country that is less persuadable, more polarized, and more divided.”
New from us
Phil on how the Unite union can get back to reality.
Josh on the madness of bitcoin in City AM.
Phil’s new book, To Be Clear: A Style Guide For Business Writing, is out now.
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