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Gobbledegook
by Alan D. Winter, 23 July 2004
Have you ever wondered how anyone can sit down with a pen, manage to concoct the most mystifying sentences ever devised, and then have the confidence/gaul/audacity to publish? And have you ever wondered why whoever-it-is bothers? You might think, for all the education those charged with drawing up letters and contracts get, that they could come up with sentences that everyone can understand.The Campaign For Plain English is one organisation determined to simplify the written English language so that we can all understand it. For example, when a broadband internet company says it is having trouble “physically installing the metallic facility path”, what it really means is they can't lay the cable!
The Campaign, now in its 25th year, has just announced the winner of it’s poll for the most baffling example of gobbledegook from its 25-year history. The prize goes to the draft National Minimum Wage Regulations from 1988, who came up with this wonderful explanation to define “non-hours work” - “the hours of non-hours work worked by a worker in a pay reference period shall be the total of the number of hours spent by him during the pay reference period in carrying out the duties required of him under his contract to do non-hours work”
The runner-up in this competition was a 1989 document by STC Technology Limited which explained that, “There is an unavoidable conflict of teminology in naming the classes Class and Instantation. Instantation is not itself a real instance but a class (namely, the class of all real instances). Likewise, Class is not a class of real instances but a class of classes (namely, the class of all classes of real instances). Instantation could be renamed Class and Class renamed Type to avoid this. In that case, the members of Class would not be classes and the members of Type would not be types”
And if you were ever baffled by a statement explaining how your sales commission was worked out, have some sympathy for DHSS claimants. The following words appeared in a 1982 letter from the Department of Health and Social Security: “From and including 26.2.81 an additional component is payable at the weekly rate of 5p which is the rate appropriate to 11/4% of the amount of the surpluses in the earnings factors for 3 years in the claimant's working life after reduction on account of his guaranteed minimum pension of £2.04 (the guaranteed minimum pension was originally notified to the claimant as £1.99 and has subsequently been amended to £2.04) (Social Security Pensions Act 1975 Section 6 and 29 (1) and the Social Security (Earnings Factor) Regulations reg 2 and the Schedule) and graduated retirement benefit at the weekly rate of £2.37 (£2.58 from 26.2.81) which is the amount appropriate to 67 units of graduated contributions paid or treated as paid by the claimant (National Insurance Act 1965 Section 36 and the Social Security (Graduated Retirement Benefit) (No.2) Regulations reg 3! (3) and Schedule 1).”
Since the timeshare product is one we want our customers to enjoy, it is right and proper that we do not deluge them with baffling gobbledegook. The text we do give them should be short, to the point, and be of a font size which can be read without a magnifying glass. I shall be monitoring timeshare agreements and passing baffling content on to the Campaign for entry into their “Golden Bull” annual awards. You have been warned! Let’s hope it does not come to that, and that when the Campaign run their next awards, timeshare agreements are not even being considered.
If you’d like to find out more about the Campaign for Plain English, vist their web site at www.plainenglish.co.uk. To send me examples of gobbledegook, especially in the timeshare business please use the contact form.