I have a visceral reaction to words like elucidate, and other fluff. My writing has to be very to the point, and technically accurate. Because of this, I carve up drafts from juniors like a Thanksgiving turkey.
Most “professional” writing is just a bunch of phrases interspersed with a few chunks of information.
I’m involved with bidding and grant proposal stuff for software and it’s 90% empty words. I draw two diagrams and a page of text, sales deletes 60% of the text, misinterprets the rest and then puffs it up to 30 pages.
It doesn’t have to be like that. Sure, context is important, but parroting phrases or other crap that the client has in the RFP is bullshit. They don’t want you blowing smoke up their ass, they want a technically sound product that addresses the exact issues they asked you to address. They also want you to show them how you’re going to get there, and achieve the objectives they set out.
I realize you’re on the tech side; I’m just venting my frustrations with the corporate/PM spheres.
I thankfully don’t have to deal with RFPs anymore, but when I did, I’d either go line-by-line or ignore the prospect’s text entirely. There is an in-between, but it’s wishy-washy crowd-pleasing nonsense, and even the people entrenched in those bureaucracies see straight through it.
That, and parroting makes it sound like you don’t know what they want, or that you’re stupid, and the best that you could come up with is their own text with slight variation
It’s heartening to see comments like this. Busybody buzzwords and marketing maneuvering infiltrating real scientific study has been a hallmark of the de-intellectualisation of society for a long time, in my mind.
I have a visceral reaction to words like elucidate, and other fluff. My writing has to be very to the point, and technically accurate. Because of this, I carve up drafts from juniors like a Thanksgiving turkey.
Most “professional” writing is just a bunch of phrases interspersed with a few chunks of information.
I’m involved with bidding and grant proposal stuff for software and it’s 90% empty words. I draw two diagrams and a page of text, sales deletes 60% of the text, misinterprets the rest and then puffs it up to 30 pages.
It doesn’t have to be like that. Sure, context is important, but parroting phrases or other crap that the client has in the RFP is bullshit. They don’t want you blowing smoke up their ass, they want a technically sound product that addresses the exact issues they asked you to address. They also want you to show them how you’re going to get there, and achieve the objectives they set out.
I realize you’re on the tech side; I’m just venting my frustrations with the corporate/PM spheres.
I thankfully don’t have to deal with RFPs anymore, but when I did, I’d either go line-by-line or ignore the prospect’s text entirely. There is an in-between, but it’s wishy-washy crowd-pleasing nonsense, and even the people entrenched in those bureaucracies see straight through it.
That, and parroting makes it sound like you don’t know what they want, or that you’re stupid, and the best that you could come up with is their own text with slight variation
Doing the Lord’s work. The longer I work in academia, the more radical I become about keeping it simple.
It’s heartening to see comments like this. Busybody buzzwords and marketing maneuvering infiltrating real scientific study has been a hallmark of the de-intellectualisation of society for a long time, in my mind.
Your writing could use a little polishing.