August 01, 2008
Kate Bateman Proceedings Magazine - U.S. Naval Institute
Bad writing isn't just poor form, it's a national security issue.
Consider the following passages. The first is an adaptation, in modern Pentagonese, of the second:
The smaller and more agile forces collected here represent a select
and elite band of highly motivated warfighters. In the event of adverse
battlefield consequences, senior leadership will ensure that
participants are suitably recognized in their next quarterly
evaluation. Regardless of the maladaptations of combatants, the current
operational environment will leverage their inherent capabilities and
capacities and enhance total-force interoperability. Non-participants
will regret that they did not have an integrated vision of our
potential for full-spectrum dominance.
Which is to say,
[KING HENRY V]
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.1
No one expects the U.S. Department of Defense and the services to
write like Shakespeare. But the disparity between these examples isn't
just amusing, it's harmful to our security and unfair to the American
taxpayer.
Bad writing in the Defense Department undermines U.S. national
security. Alive and well in the corridors of the Pentagon and
throughout the services, the misuse and abuse of language obscures
major defense issues, alienates non-defense experts, and suffocates
ideas. Put simply, bad writing wastes time and money. The United States
can ill afford such waste in peacetime, much less in war.
Language Costs
Compared to troop retention problems or IEDs, poor writing may seem
a distressingly petty complaint. When we consider how far-reaching its
effects are, however, bad writing becomes anything but petty. While
serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1984, General John
W. Vessey Jr. put it bluntly, "From my own experience, I can tell you,
more has been screwed up on the battlefield and misunderstood in the
Pentagon because of a lack of understanding of the English language
than any other single factor."2
Or as Mortimer D. Goldstein, who had a 25-year career in the State
Department, responded to Vessey's words, "I suspect that the problem .
. . is not so much a lack of understanding of English as the failure to
write it so that it can be understood."3
From 1985 to 1986, Goldstein published a series of 20 articles titled,
"Disciplined Writing and Career Development" in State Magazine.4
I would bet there is no better guide to, as Goldstein called it,
"writing style and technique as they affect the practical task of
communication."
How does bad writing hurt U.S. national security? Why is it worth
getting worked up over wordiness, passive voice, and overused jargon?
Let's start with an example of Defense Department writing. This is
the official definition of "Strategic Communication" as published in
the Quadrennial Defense Review Execution Roadmap:
The ability to focus USG processes and efforts to understand and
engage key audiences to create, strengthen, or preserve conditions
favorable to advance national interests and objectives through the use
of coordinated information, themes, plans, programs, and actions
synchronized with other elements of national power.
To be clear, my aim is not to skewer the idea, but to challenge how
it is expressed. First, note that as a definition of a noun, the above
is not a complete sentence, but an exceedingly long noun phrase. It
contains seven verbs (focus, understand, engage, create, strengthen,
preserve, advance) and two adjectives derived from verbs (coordinated
and synchronized). More than a few of these words are favorites in the
Pentagon, surely familiar to a DOD audience. Even so, most readers
probably need three reads to begin to understand what "Strategic
Communication" means. Most are probably left wondering which verbs take
priority. Shall we go forth to focus, to engage, to strengthen, or to
synchronize? How do "processes" differ from "efforts"? And why specify
"conditions favorable to advance national interests and objectives?" Is
there any time when the United States does not seek such conditions?
The definition is a victim of its authors' collective thoroughness,
a common pitfall in any large bureaucracy. In their attempt to include
every angle and every aspect, to describe each possibly related
component, to leave no stone unturned, the authors garbled the real
meaning almost beyond recognition. ...
From: www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/story.asp?STORY_ID=1553
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