A communication skills case study checklist: six hidden defects, one sentence

The message below is invented for this walkthrough. No real organization is described, and the point is not the message but the six named defects inside it, each of which has a precise name and a different repair.

All of the items were not reviewed before the update, so we should probably revisit the approach and get the numbers to Sam and Alex or the wider group shortly, since the improvement was significant.

Everyone who receives that thinks they understood it. Three of them understood different things.

What to take away

The distinction the whole thing rests on

Ambiguity means a sentence has more than one distinct reading, and you

Vagueness means there is one reading, but its boundary is not sharp: there are cases where nobody can say whether the word applies. It is repaired by supplying a criterion, not by rewriting.

Generality means one clear reading that covers many cases on purpose. It is not a defect at all. A policy that says "all staff" is general and precise at the same time.

Conflating these leads people to fix the wrong thing. Rewriting a vague sentence more elegantly leaves it vague. Adding a definition to an ambiguous sentence leaves both readings alive.

Defect one: scope ambiguity

"All of the items were not reviewed."

Two readings. None of the items was reviewed. Or: not all of the items were reviewed, some were. This is scope ambiguity: the negation and the quantifier can each take precedence over the other, and English does not settle which.

The repair is to move the negation so only one reading survives. "None of the items was reviewed", or "Some items were not reviewed". Which one you write depends on which is true, and that is the point: the original let the writer avoid finding out.

Defect two: an unresolved conjunction

"to Sam and Alex or the wider group"

Three readings, at least: to both named people, or else to the group; to Sam, and then either to Alex or to the group; to the named people and possibly also the group. This is structural ambiguity from an unbracketed conjunction, and and/or produces the same problem in a more compact form.

The repair is a list, not better punctuation. Name the recipients.

Defect three: vagueness presented as a fact

"the improvement was significant"

One reading, no boundary. Significant in ordinary usage means "large enough to matter", and how large that is has not been said. It is also a word with a technical meaning in statistics that is unrelated to size, which means a reader from that background may read it as a claim about evidence rather than about magnitude.

The repair is a criterion or a comparison: significant compared with what, over what period, measured how. If you do not have that, the honest sentence is "there was an improvement; we have not yet sized it".

Defect four: hedging that hides the actor

"we should probably revisit"

Hedging is language that reduces commitment: probably, somewhat, may, tends to. Hedges are legitimate when the uncertainty is real, and they are then better called qualification: a statement of how confident you actually are.

The failure is a hedge with no uncertainty behind it, used to avoid owning a proposal. Here it does three things at once: it does not say who revisits, it does not say when, and should leaves open whether this is a recommendation or a decision.

The repair is to separate confidence from ownership. "I will revisit the approach this week" is a commitment. "I think we should revisit it; the decision is yours" is a recommendation. Both are clear. The original is neither.

Defect five: nominalization

The general mechanism, turning a verb into a noun so that it no longer needs a

subject, is described in the entry on nominalization. The version of it that turns up in operating language is covered in the operating word pairs.

A nominalization is a verb turned into a noun. Updating becomes the update; improving becomes the improvement. The cost is that a noun does not need an actor, so the person who did the thing disappears from the sentence and cannot be asked about it.

Nominalizations are not banned: sometimes the thing genuinely is a noun. The test is whether the sentence still tells you who acted. If not, turn it back into a verb and see who has to be added.

Defect six: a deadline that is not one

"shortly"

Shortly, soon, and as soon as possible are not times. They transfer the scheduling decision to the person with the least information about competing work, and they make lateness unprovable in either direction. A deadline that is not one is among the communication skills mistakes that recur most often.

A date is not always necessary. But when the sentence is an instruction, the absence of a date means the instruction has no failure condition, which means it is not really an instruction.

The repair

Same content, defects removed:

Some items were not reviewed before Priya updated the file. I propose we revisit the approach; I will circulate the revised numbers to Sam, Alex and the operations group by Thursday. The measured change was an increase, and I have not yet sized it against the previous period.

It is longer. That is normal and it is the correct trade: the original was short because it left four decisions unmade, and each of those would have generated its own thread.

Pairs worth keeping apart

Concise and terse. Concise means no words that are not working. Terse means short at the cost of information the reader needed. Cutting words is only a gain if what remains still answers the question.

Brief and incomplete. A brief message that omits the deadline is not brief, it is incomplete, and the missing part will be requested.

Clarity and simplicity. A clear sentence is one the reader takes exactly one meaning from. That sometimes requires a technical term and a definition, which is more complex and clearer.

A recommendation and a decision. These need different sentences. If a reader cannot tell which they received, they will default to the one requiring less of them.

Where to check the standard rather than the advice

For documents subject to formal drafting requirements, public disclosures in particular, general writing advice is not the standard. A regulator's published plain writing program sets out what is actually required of the documents it covers, and where a rule specifies how something must be expressed, the rule governs. Federal guidance on writing for understanding covers the general mechanics.

The underlying definitions are at communication skills, the structural versions of these faults are listed among the nine communication errors, and the grammar that deletes an actor is set out under corporate jargon.

Common questions

Is the repaired version not just longer?

In words, yes. In total elapsed effort, no, because the original produces at least one clarifying reply and often a piece of wrong work. Count the exchange, not the message.

Which defect should I look for first in my own writing?

The deadline that is not one. It is the easiest to spot, the quickest to fix, and it is present in most messages that go unanswered.

Does this apply to speech as well?

The first four do, and in speech the repair is a question rather than an edit: ask which items, ask who, ask by when. In writing you can fix it before anyone has to ask.

How do I check a message before sending it?

Read it as the person who has to act on it, and ask what you would do next. If the answer is that you would reply asking a question, that question is the missing piece.