To be or not to be informal

Published on August 26

DEB HAD JUST RUN A WORKSHOP. “Was on official correspondence,” he told Anjum. “For those who write to customers of India’s largest private-sector bank. Was successful if you go by participants’ response. But was pointless.”

That naturally got us all interested.

“I mean the participants were eager to learn, and responded well,” Deb said. “My Powerpoint presentation showed them excerpts from Sir Ernest Gowers’s all-time classic, The Complete Plain Words. But they said their supervisors (they call them ‘auditors’ for some funny reason) had told them to do just the opposite.”

“What exactly?” Asked Anjum.

“Mostly to do with being informal in their letters,” said Deb. “Gowers says: ‘Avoid a formal framework if you can . . . ordinary letters to the public should be cast in as informal and friendly a way as possible’. That got them into a tizzy. Because their idiotic supervisors insist they use the formal baniya English of the East India Company days. You know, the ludicrous Baboo English, with scraps of commercialese such as same/the same; the said letter; aforesaid letter; duly noted, and Kindly instead of please, and so on.”

“You mean their ‘auditors’ are walking fossils?” asked Deepak.

“You hit the nail squarely on the head,” said Deb. “Yes. The bank’s typical of Indian PSUs. At the top you might have a few brilliant minds, among mostly dead wood. At the middle and lower middle, you have the dunces. And at the lower level, you have the willing workers. But the middle levels see to it that no feedback can reach the top. And nothing from the top can reach the lower levels. The dead wood at the top weren’t ever capable of seeing to anything in any case. The few functioning minds at the top are too busy to probe what’s happening down under. So the idiots at mid-level have a gala time doing bugger-all, or being slave-drivers. They know nothing, read nothing, have learnt nothing. They got in when the organization was expanding, recruiting in a hurry. Then with routine promotions, they became junior officers. And so the middle rungs got chock-a-block with over-promoted idiots.”

“Ah, the Kargil problem,” Deepak said.

“Meaning?” Chhanda asked.

“Infiltration,” said Deepak. “Because adequate checks weren’t in place, infiltrators got in where they didn’t belong. Happens to all Indian organizations. It’s how our public sector got ruined. Now it’s happening to our private-sector units. Soon, the dross at the middle and lower middle will get kicked upstairs to senior levels. More promotions’ll mean more dead wood at the top. And that’ll mean stagnation and rot upstairs. And only routine work at the bottom. Then, as more and more dead wood piles up at the top, the organization will sink.”

“But tell us,” said Chhanda, “just how do those mid-level fools misguide those who write letters?”

Deb explained: “I showed them this quote from Gowers: ‘Use no more words than are necessary to do the job. Superfluous words waste your time and official paper, tire your reader and obscure your meaning. There is no need, for instance, to begin each paragraph with phrases like ‘I am further to point out, I would also add, You will moreover observe . . . Go straight to what you have to say, without precautionary words . . .’ But their ‘auditors’ have told them to begin every para with stupidities like ‘We wish to inform you/We further wish to inform you’. I asked them what they’d do if they had three or more things to say. They told me they’d then have to say ‘We also wish to inform you/We further also wish to inform you’ and so on.”

“You mean,” said Chhanda, “they’ve each time to blow a trumpet announcing their INTENTION to inform the customer, rather than tell him directly what he needs to know.”

“That’s right,” Deb said. “Those mid-level idiots have told them to do precisely everything that goes against modern business communication. Gowers says: ‘If two words convey your meaning equally well, choose the common one rather than the less common. Do not prefer regarding, respecting or concerning to about, or say advert for refer, or state, inform, acquaint or advise when you might use the word say or tell.’ But can you believe it, those semi-literate mid-level cretins have invented the rule that say or tell are words too informal to be used in correspondence!”

“You mean some congenital idiots have taken to reinventing the English language,” said Deepak.

“Exactly,” said Deb. “Gowers says : ‘Do not say hereto, herein, hereof, herewith, hereunder, or similar compounds with there, unless, like therefore, they have become part of everyday language. Most of them put a flavour of legalism into any document in which they are used.’ But without exception, their letters are spattered with just those fossil words.”

This irritated Anjum: “What explains this Indian compulsion to ludicrous language?”

“I guess Rudolph Flesch gave the best explanation,” said Deb. “I showed them what Flesch said in 'The Art of Readable Writing: ‘. . . Typically, formal language is the language of minor clerks, secondary officials, cogs in some social machine. It is their . . . psychological substitute for personal importance. The farther toward the bottom, the thicker the coat of assumed dignity’.”

“That’s it,” said Anjum. “The East India Company moulded Indians into a nation of minor clerks.”
“Wasn’t it Deepak who told us about the Company clerks’ curse?” Deb asked. “That Indians would never rise above their lingo? Indian business writing sure proves you were right, Deepak.”