Business Letters and Gobbledygook

What exactly is gobbledygook? The dictionary definition is “language characterized by circumlocution and jargon, usually hard to understand.”

(Is it just me? Or is it ironic that a dictionary definition of gobbledygook includes an obscure 5-syllable word (circumlocution) that could just as easily have been “wordiness?” Just thinking…)

The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “Language that is meaningless or is made unintelligible by excessive use of abstruse technical terms; nonsense.” Do you fall prey to it as you read the business writing of others? Samples of such rude behavior abound.

In what should be no surprise to anyone, gobbledygook is synonymous with government writing, Legal writing finishing a close second.

Aside from being characterized as the mortal enemy of any and all business writers, it’s the perfect example of an onomatopoeia, a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the source of the sound it describes. While most examples of onomatopoeia are utterances such as whoosh, bang, crash, etc., it’s hard to think of a better example of the term than the four syllable word gobbledygook.

A MAVERICK AMONG WORDSMITHS
The word was first coined in 1944 by U.S. Rep. Maury Maverick, D.-Texas, (1895-1954) as “the over involved, pompous talk of officialdom.” [Klein].

In a memo dated March 30, 1944, Maverick banned “gobbledygook language” and mock-threatening,” as he referred to it.

As he so adroitly put it, “Anyone using the words activation or implementation will be shot.”

Maverick said he made up the word in imitation of the gobbling of a turkey. Another word for it, coined about the same time, was BAFFLEGAB (1952).

A few classic synonyms: gibberish, claptrap, nonsense, rubbish, balderdash, blather, garbage.

We all could easily provide a few examples of our own, needless to say. So much bad writing, so little time! Here’s one of my favorites, from an actual interoffice memo from a U.S. Government Agency known for shooting rockets into space. Let’s see if you can translate it:

Management as become cognizant of the necessity of eliminating undesirable vegetation surrounding the periphery of the facility.

Translation? Please kill the weeds around the building.

JAMES J. KILPATRICK ON GOBBLEDYGOOK
James J. Kilpatrick (November 1, 1920 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma August 15, 2010 in Washington, D.C.) was an American newspaper journalist, columnist, author, writer and grammarian.

Gobbledygook was one of his favorite pet peeves. He defined it as “Sentences I did not exactly understand. Such sentences are known professionally as gobbledygook,” and was proud to refer to it as “the obfuscation art.”

Government writing was one of his most fertile topics; he referred to Washington D.C. as “the land of Bureaucratia.”

I couldn’t have coined a better description, but after all, Kilpatrick was the Master of gobbledygook.

He cited a Department of Commerce memo that sent out instructions for answering a survey of foreign transactions. Here was another official from “the land of Bureaucratia” speaking loudly once again: ‘Affiliated foreign group’ means (1) the foreign parent, (2) any foreign person, proceeding up the foreign parent’s ownership chain, which owns more than 50 per centum of the person below it up to and including that person which is not owned more than 50 per centum by another foreign person, and (3) any foreign person, proceeding down the ownership chain(s) of each of these members, which is owned more than 50 per centum by the person above it. Now don’t ask me to say THAT again! I hope you leaned something today.

It goes without saying that business writing is overflowing with similar poppycock. So please send along your favorites; if you work in Bureaucratia, this task should be particularly easy.