The Traps of Writing

"Let's face it: Business today is drowning in bullshit."

That's the first line of Why Business People Speak Like Idiots (Free Press, 2005), a book written by the three current and former Deloitte & Touche consultants who created Bullfighter, the software to help writers determine how much bull they use. The authors wrote the book to detail the reasons why the jargon that Bullfighter is supposed to reduce—as well as other bad speaking and writing habits—still persist in business, and to suggest ways to break those habits.

They group many linguistic crimes under one of four categories, or traps. In an interview with Training, one of the authors discussed these traps from the perspective of his own experience with e-learning and training. Jon Warshawsky, a manager at Deloitte Services LP, helped to start the firm's e-learning practice and founded a newsletter about organizational change and learning at Deloitte. Here are the four traps and their particular danger for trainers.

The Obscurity Trap.