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Meet the MasterMinds: Tom Sant on the Language of Success

Tom Sant is an expert on business and technical communications, and the author of Persuasive Business Proposals and The Giants of Sales. He is a popular speaker, consultant, and writer on the trials and tribulations of business communicators.

In Sant’s latest book, The Language of Success, he delivers practical advice for beating the nonsense out of anyone’s writing, whether it’s in a proposal, report, email, or anything else we write. 

McLaughlin: You talk about the “implicit contract” between the writer and reader. What do you mean by that?

Sant: Well, we ask readers to invest time and mental energy to make sense of our messages. And that’s not a trivial expectation because everybody is stressed, tired, and short on time. So when I send you an email, a report, or a proposal, the implicit contract is that what I’m sending you is worth your investment.

If we fail to deliver on that—if our writing is hard to understand or we write in marketing clichés, then we’re in breach of contract, I suppose you could say. And readers have a right to be irritated with us.

That’s why my basic philosophy is that, if your message fails to communicate, it’s your fault. I don’t care who the reader is. You have to take the reader into account and modify the message to get through—even if your reader is dumb as a post.

You have to take the reader into account and modify the message to get through—even if your reader is dumb as a post.

McLaughlin: Do you think people are aware of that implicit contract when they write?

Sant: No, I don’t think so. I think they carry over the same mindset—or lack of conscious mindset is probably a better way to put it—as when they engage in ordinary conversation. When we’re shooting the breeze with friends, we don’t always feel an obligation to make sense or to be clear.

Unfortunately, it’s not enough in business just to be our charming selves. We have to offer some value. Most people don’t think that way. With internal company communications, for instance, people often lapse into mindless mode. They dump whatever comes to mind onto the screen and hit Send. The result is frustrated, annoyed, or confused readers. They may not be sure why they received something, what it’s supposed to mean, or what they should do about it.

McLaughlin: What’s your number one gripe about business writing?

Sant: My biggest gripe is when people tell me oh, we have to say it that way. Whether it’s a proposal, marketing materials, or other kinds of persuasive writing, sometimes I say you know, I don’t think people are going to understand this. It’s too complicated and you’re using an awful lot of in-house jargon.

The response may be, yes, that’s true, but we have to say it that way because it’s very important to be specific in our terms. My reaction is to question why the readers need to understand the terms.

What they want to know is whether or not you can solve a problem for them. If you can’t break through that, then you’re stuck repeating the same old mistakes and trying to justify them with “We have to express it this way.” That is seldom true.

Well, I think many people are afraid to put important messages in writing, or they don’t feel confident that they can write well.

McLaughlin: What do you think is the most common barrier to effective writing?

Sant: Well, I think many people are afraid to put important messages in writing, or they don’t feel confident that they can write well. The mistake they make is that, instead of trying to communicate in their own voice, they try to use somebody else’s voice. They lapse into what I call pseudo language, a nonfunctional way of communicating which they think is somehow superior to what they could produce themselves.

In the book, I identify four of these pseudo languages. One of them is fluff--the use of vague generalizations and assertions. For example, “We offer best-of-breed products and world-class service to leverage our capabilities as a partner.” That has no specificity and provides no evidence that it’s true. It’s just a bunch of baloney that immediately sets off BS detectors.

Guff is another form of pseudo language. This is the mode people use when they want to convince us that they are more intelligent or in the know than we are. Guff is the language you get from many bureaucrats, senior managers, lawyers, and politicians. It showcases big words, long sentences, lots of passive voice, and convoluted constructions. At the end of it, you don’t know what they’ve said.

Then we have Geek, which is the jargon-filled language of people with a certain technical expertise. Perhaps they forget that we don’t know the acronyms, or perhaps they remember but don’t care because it’s easier for them to use that language than to write in everyday terms.

The last one is weasel language, which gives us the feeling that the writer is trying to trick us by using phrases like “it may be,” “it’s possible that,” or “it might be prudent to.” Well, does that mean yes or no? Do you think we should do it or not? What are you recommending here?

Weasel language uses lots of subjunctive construction so everything’s hypothetical. Nothing’s an assertion. That produces a sense of dismay on the part of the reader, who might think, I just paid a ton of money, and I still have no clear answer.

McLaughlin: Writing styles vary a lot, from very formal to casual. Any tips for how people should choose the appropriate tone or style for their written communications?

Sant: It’s helpful to have some flexibility in your tone and style so you can vary the way you deliver the message to match what your reader will find most appropriate and easiest to understand. Having said that, typically people are too informal in internal communications, and they tend to be too formal in external communications.

When we write to our colleagues, our language is often just one notch above instant messaging chatter. And in external communications, we sound like we’re applying for the deanship of the School of Pomposity. Nobody talks or writes that way in the real world. But we feel obligated to make clear that we are taking this very seriously in the hope that the reader will take us seriously.

As a result, both styles err on the side of excess, one too informal and the other too formal. A better guideline is to ask, if this person was sitting across from me, how would I say it face to face? What language would I use, how would I communicate these ideas?

McLaughlin: What are some simple ways people can improve the clarity of their writing?

Sant: It’s amazing how quickly and easily you can improve on clarity. Step one is to shorten your sentences. I don’t know whether people think long sentences sound more impressive or if they just get lost in their own verbiage and don’t go back to see how it sounds. Whatever the reason, they write sentences that are too long for others to decode comfortably.

For a college educated, professional audience, the average sentence length should be around 15 words, and not much more than 17 words. But if you go through memos, emails, letters, proposals, white papers, status reports, and so on, you’ll find the average sentence length is in the low 20s. I’ve seen documents in which the average sentence length was in the 30s.

The brain is not built to absorb that much syntax, break it down, analyze it, and figure out what it means. Our brains can handle one or two long sentences. But you’ve got to break them up with some short ones.

McLaughlin: How does word selection impact clarity?

Sant: You will communicate most clearly using everyday words. Daniel Oppenheimer, a professor of psychology at Princeton University, published an interesting study in the journal, Cognition. In the study, he analyzed the impact that big words have on the reader.

Well, to nobody’s surprise, Oppenheimer’s study found that comprehension drops dramatically when you substitute a longer synonym for just one out of every six short, everyday words. Change just that much—one out of six words—and comprehension goes way down.

Oppenheimer’s study also found that, not only do big words make it harder for people to understand writing, but the reader also becomes suspicious of the writer.

As the reader loses comprehension, the writer loses credibility. By using big words, we might think we are going to impress people but, instead, we put them off and make them doubt our own competence.

Think of the significance for a proposal, for example. Here’s your Executive Summary and you’ve used all these big words, trying to impress the client. Instead the client is thinking, these people are full of BS—I don’t think they know what they’re talking about.

McLaughlin: Much of our communication these days is done by email. How can we become better communicators using email?

Sant: The reality is that email is the de facto mode of communication in business today. Statistics indicate that the business world is producing around 65 billion emails a year. Part of the reason we end up with 65 billion is that about 30 billion are following up and asking, did you mean this, or what?

One simple tip to improve your emails is to use the subject line effectively. A short, clear, specific subject line will increase the chances that the recipient will read your email right away as opposed to ignoring or putting it off. And the reader will know what to expect in the email.

Also, don’t be too informal in your emails. Avoid using the sequence of three exclamation points or the smiley face emoticon. It just doesn’t look professional. I strongly recommend that you limit your use of emoticons and email acronyms like LOL or BTW.

Another point is to be polite. Don’t forget that email is still a medium of business communication and that it can travel very quickly.

In the book, I wrote about the CEO of a major company who sent out an inflammatory, angry email to his senior managers. He told them they were stupid and lazy; he was tired of coming to work and not seeing cars in the parking lot; he was sick of people leaving by 6:00pm; that this was not how he made the business great and he was not going to tolerate it.

His words were in capital letters, with exclamation points. You could practically see the spit on his screen. He was screaming in print. Somebody who got this email posted it on a Yahoo message board. Two days later, Wall Street picked up on it and his company’s share value went down over 20 percent. That executive’s lack of both civility and common sense in how he expressed himself resulted in some real damage.

And one last tip: even though it’s email, do edit it. Run basic spell check, and read through it before you send it. Too much stuff goes out containing blatant errors. I’m guilty of it too, but it doesn’t look good. It undercuts your credibility and it’s easy to fix.

McLaughlin: Thanks for your time today.

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