I was trained on writing style guides from literary or journalistic contexts, like Strunk & White, which teach you to be relentless in removing cliches and using simple short Anglo-Saxon words wherever possible. Business language constantly violates those rules: it’s full of cliches and unnecessary Latinate locutions.
Scott Adams’s description of a business writing course describes something much more like the Strunk and White style:
I went from being a bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in “business writing.” I couldn’t believe how simple it was. I’ll tell you the main tricks here so you don’t have to waste a day in class.
Business writing is about clarity and persuasion. The main technique is keeping things simple. Simple writing is persuasive. A good argument in five sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don’t fight it.
Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences.
It seems like either something big has changed between then and now, or you’re working in a very different subset of “business” than that course was for. In conspicuously competitive companies like Amazon, there’s a strong presumption of literacy, the opposite of the thing you’re describing, at least at the highest levels. I notice that your example of a “business” is Palantir, a company that makes money on relationships with the government and other quasi-monopoly firms, not by competing in anything like a market. Palantir and Amazon are fundamentally not engaged in the same kind of activity, and covering both activities under the heading “business” obscures more than it reveals here.
Low epistemic confidence, but I’m wondering if the difference in style is due to marketing being anti-inductive (and the time since Adams learned to write).
It seems like sarahconstantin and Adams are talking about two completely different things. Adams is talking about writing internal reports or memos for efficient transfer of information. saraconstantin is talking about writing public-facing marketing materials. The incentives and aims of the two types of writing are completely different.
Similarly, “Business email” is not one thing. Writing an email to a client or prospective client, or writing an email to a coworker, or for that matter to a boss or a subordinate, will all have different requirements and look totally different.
Scott Adams’s description of a business writing course describes something much more like the Strunk and White style:
It seems like either something big has changed between then and now, or you’re working in a very different subset of “business” than that course was for. In conspicuously competitive companies like Amazon, there’s a strong presumption of literacy, the opposite of the thing you’re describing, at least at the highest levels.
I notice that your example of a “business” is Palantir, a company that makes money on relationships with the government and other quasi-monopoly firms, not by competing in anything like a market. Palantir and Amazon are fundamentally not engaged in the same kind of activity, and covering both activities under the heading “business” obscures more than it reveals here.
Low epistemic confidence, but I’m wondering if the difference in style is due to marketing being anti-inductive (and the time since Adams learned to write).
It seems like sarahconstantin and Adams are talking about two completely different things. Adams is talking about writing internal reports or memos for efficient transfer of information. saraconstantin is talking about writing public-facing marketing materials. The incentives and aims of the two types of writing are completely different.
Similarly, “Business email” is not one thing. Writing an email to a client or prospective client, or writing an email to a coworker, or for that matter to a boss or a subordinate, will all have different requirements and look totally different.