1.5 Clarity and Customization: Sharpening the Right Message

In thinking about written and spoken communication, the term “clarity” refers both to how exact your message is and how comprehensible it is. Both of these features of communication matter not only to sharing information but also to persuading your audience.

Failing to Communicate

We have all been in a situation where we’ve received unclear instructions about something, and, as a result, we didn’t know how to proceed. For example, maybe you once received an instruction like this one:

Grab the book and bring it to me. And hurry!

Whoever is telling you to do this must feel like it’s urgent because he’s told you to hurry. But how are you supposed to act? Unless you already know where the book is and what book he wants, you’ll have no idea what to do. Maybe this person wants you to grab his favorite paperback from his desk or the technical manual from the storage room? Without more information, it’s impossible to say.

Of course, this example is an extreme one—if someone gave you that instruction, he’d probably be joking, or he’d know that you already understood what he meant. Other issues with clarity are more common and can lead to problems with decision-making that are just as severe. Earlier, we saw an example of miscommunication in our discussion of semantics when you had a misunderstanding with Juliette, the software developer.

A lack of clarity manifests itself in other ways as well. Some people have a bad habit of writing sentences that are too long and contain too many subordinate clauses. Then you end up with a sentence like this:

Increasing efficiency, which is the top priority for the CFO, who believes that she’s on her way to the top of a company board, which success she’ll share with her family and friends, who love her, would be nice.

Yikes! That sentence is a maze, and by the end, it’s hard to even know what’s going on. We wouldn’t want a decision we make or have responsibility for to depend on such an unclear message. As we’ll learn later, a good way to avoid this problem is to focus on writing and speaking in short sentences. Short sentences are easier to understand and tend to have fewer subordinate clauses.

Buzzwords

Other people have the habit of using complicated, showy words when simple ones would do. Here’s one example:

Our company leverages the latest data-driven analytical techniques to utilize a faster approach.

In this sentence, “leverages” and “utilize” just mean use. Some people, especially if they work in business or marketing, will know that. But not everyone will. We can avoid the problem entirely just by plugging in the simple word “use.”

I proved this result using modus ponens.

In Topic 3 on deductive arguments, we will learn that “modus ponens” refers to a very simple rule of logic. But the name for the rule is used in its original Latin title, and, unfortunately, we’re stuck with it.

Jargon

But what should we do about technical terms when there isn’t a good English alternative? We will cover this point in detail in our topics on semantics (Topic 7), rhetoric (Topic 9), and clarity (Topic 10), but, for now, we’ll just make a point about jargon. Jargon is technical language that is usually understood only by people with a certain background or who are working in a certain profession. Jargon may include technical terms, like “modus ponens,” but also acronyms, as we see here:

The BW is limited because of the EMF, and since the POV is so high, we’ll have to install VOMs wherever we see a GFCI.

Crystal clear, right? If you were a professional electrician, the jargon would be. You would know that all these acronyms have to do with electricity and the electrical industry. But most people won’t know this jargon. They’ll be baffled by the sentence and will quit reading or attempting to understand the message.

Different Audiences Have Different Needs

Thinking about jargon pushes us beyond clarity. We start to consider who our audience is and what it will think about our message. The same message delivered to varying audiences may need to be framed very differently. If we were speaking to a room full of electricians, for instance, all of them might understand the BW and EMF acronyms right away. But if we had to communicate that same thought to someone who wasn’t an electrician, we could—and should—change the way we communicate.

Let’s return to the software example. You made a post on an internal message board about your decision to increase the product’s efficiency. The audience for this post was limited to your team of developers. Because you know all of them, you can count on them having a certain background and being familiar with certain terms. You could write about your decision using all the technical language you’d like, and your team would understand .

But as the leader of your development team, you have to communicate the same message to other audiences. You’ll need to tell the marketing team because they’ll be selling the idea about your new upgrades on social media. You’ll need to tell the salespeople because they work with customers. You may need to tell others inside the company as well, and you might even find yourself talking about your choice with people outside your organization who don’t know your product at all. With each person or group of people, you will probably communicate the same idea in different ways depending on what you believe your audience will understand.

Content and Form

Each of these audiences is distinct in a number of different ways. They have different education levels, professional backgrounds, and levels of experience at the company. They differ in other ways as well, including in their needs and expectations of what you will produce. Each of these factors will influence the way you craft your communication with an audience. The content, or information, you want to share may ultimately be the same across audiences, but the understanding and needs of each audience determine the form that content will take.

In many cases, arguments fail to persuade others because they are designed for the wrong audience—they are tailored incorrectly. The message doesn’t connect with the intended audience. But just like everything else we will cover in this course, tailoring a message for an audience is a skill that we can learn with practice.