The most successful businesses these days are those that are able to communicate with their customers in real-time or near real-time. Often, one of the accompanying risks is a tendency to hit the “send” or “submit” button too quickly, prior to proofreading or taking a few moments to determine whether a message may be subject to potential misinterpretation or may be less than professional in appearance. When you are communicating with a customer at any level, you are either directly or indirectly representing your business, whether your business is a one-man show or a large corporation. To avoid disaster, always spell-check your work, but never put your total trust in the spell-check process. Spell-checkers will not catch grammatical errors, most punctuation errors, use of an incorrect word or phrase, use of most language which is inappropriate in a professional environment, or the use of language which is basically unclear. An effective message must be crystal clear and not be subject to misinterpretation. Review your message, not from the writer’s perspective, but from the reader’s perspective. You already know what you are trying to say, but what you are trying to say must be accurately conveyed to another person. In a face-to-face setting, gestures and facial expressions can serve to clarify a message and provide instant visual feedback in the event of miscommunication, but an online message does not have that advantage. When you review an unsent message from a reader’s perspective, you may be in for some surprises, leading to close calls that can be avoided.

Equally important to the clarity of your message is the content of your message. There is a difference between conversational language and the written word. Unfortunately, that difference has gotten increasingly blurred in recent years. Many of us are losing our ability to effectively communicate. It has been fifty years, and I would venture to say that we may never again witness political oratory on a par with President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address. On the same token, although we are unfortunately no longer a nation of readers, it is impossible to read a newspaper, book or periodical these days and not find grammatical and typographical errors throughout. If standards have slipped for our professional writers and public speakers, where is our inspiration to be found? For a combination of a variety of reasons, our overall communications skills have been seriously degraded, perhaps the result of an overall lack of disciplined learning, compounded by exposure to an “anything is acceptable” use of language that is prevalent in our mass media.

First and foremost, the language of effective business communication should not be confused with the language that has gained popular acceptance in casual conversation. Any intelligent person understands that there is no place for profanity in business communications. In a more perfect world, most people would consider that same profanity to also be an inappropriate component in their conversational language. Unfortunately, familiarity breeds acceptance. Profanity is an obvious example that I have used to make my point; however, I would like to offer a list of overused words, idioms, and phrases that I would like to see banished from our language, in the interest of clarifying communications.

1. “How come” is an idiom that is usually used at the beginning of a longer question. Usually, the word “why” will be a perfect substitute. Beaver Cleaver used the term “how come” in every episode of “Leave It to Beaver”. Miss Canfield and Miss Landers were probably both appalled.
2. “Make sure” is an idiom that is riding a wave of popularity these days, since it is used in almost every unscripted sentence that comes out of the mouth of President Barack Obama or anyone else in the White House. (Even his last State of the Union address, though carefully scripted, contained five uses of “make sure”.) “Make sure” has become the post-election equivalent of the word “change” from back in the campaign. Even proper language that is overused loses its effectiveness.
3. Additional idioms that we could do without are “a lot” (which some people think is actually a word, spelled “alot”), “find out”, “right away”, “take off” (as a synonym for “leave”), “figure out”, “make off with” (as a synonym for “steal”), and “all the time” (almost always an exaggeration.)
4. The phrases “to be honest” and “to tell the truth”, each of which implies that the speaker is otherwise lying.
5. Single words that are used as complete sentences, typically an adverb that is used in response to another person’s statement. The worst offender is “exactly”, generally used in conversation and typically without pronouncing the letter “t”. Other offenders include “whatever”, “precisely”, and “seriously”. I believe that this use of language originated with girls in middle school, then infected the general population.
6. Phrases that are used repeatedly in conversation, as reactions to basically anything. The worst offender by far is “Oh my God!”
7. Words that are used as verbal substitutes for stammering, most notably “like” and “you know”, can only serve to distract and annoy the person who must endure the other end of the conversation.
8. Starting sentences with the word “so” or a conjunction, most typically “and”, or ending a sentence with a preposition.
9. Use of slang in a professional setting. For example, news reporters who use the term “cops” instead of the word “police”.
10. My final complaint (today) is slightly off-topic: The use of unnecessary gestures in spoken conversation. Some people’s hands just seem to be continually in motion. The most annoying gestures are pointing and the “flip phone” sign language symbol that some people think is a necessary accompaniment to any statement involving a telephone.

Some people will argue that times have changed and that language continually evolves. That may be true, but the ability to effectively communicate will only find itself in ever-greater demand. Without basic rules and guidelines, there will ultimately be little distinction between language and noise.