Did your supervisor or manager or teacher ever give you instructions that were as clear as mud*?
* clear as mud is an idiom that means very difficult to understand: His instructions were as clear as mud.
In business, we must communicate well with our colleagues and our clients.
That means we must speak slowly and clearly and write properly using the appropriate vocabulary and good grammar.
Communicating well is difficult even in our native languages but it is much more difficult when we are using our second language.
TIP: If you write something to send to a co-worker or a customer, read it before you send it and ask yourself:
(1) Are there any grammar, spelling, or punctuation mistakes?
(2) Put yourself in the place of the reader and ask yourself "Will the reader understand what I've written?" (or is it clear as mud)?
(3) Do I need to make any changes to my message?
The following is a true story about a simple memo that no one understood.
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Joanne supervised 36 professionals in 6 city libraries.
To cut the costs of unnecessary overtime, she issued this one-sentence memo to her staff:
When workloads increase to a level requiring hours in excess of an employee’s regular duty assignment, and when such work is estimated to require a full shift of eight (8) hours or more on two (2) or more consecutive days, even though unscheduled days intervene, an employee’s tour of duty shall be altered so as to include the hours when such work must be done, unless an adverse impact would result from such employee’s absence from his previously scheduled assignment.
After the 36 copies were sent out, Joanne’s office received 26 phone calls asking what the memo meant.
What the other 10 people thought is uncertain.
It took a week to write the new policy.
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Are you a native English speaker?
If yes, did you understand the memo?
Are you an English learner?
Did you understand the memo?
Have you ever had trouble reading an Instruction Manual/User Manual for a product or a set of Help Instructions to solve a computer/software problem (e.g., MS Help)?
I'm a native speaker (with a graduate degree in English), and this reads like nonsense to me. In particular, I agree with Phil -- the idea of unscheduled days "intervening" in between "consecutive" scheduled days makes no sense.
Presumably, the idea is just that if more work needs to be done on certain days, the employees' schedules should be changed so as to cover the days when more work needs to be done (rather than having employees work extra days in addition to the days they've already been scheduled -- unless, that is, having employees work extra days is necessary to avoid an "adverse effect," I guess). But I'm not sure I would have been able to figure this out without Richard's helpful clue "To cut the costs of unnecessary overtime..."
Richard, great tips. In fact these are tips that would benefit a lot of native speakers as well. Many people seem to have the mistaken impression that good English, or advanced or formal English, should be complicated and difficult to read. It definitely should not!
While reading the memo, I felt as if my mind was surfing in the wave of sentences!
However, let me write it down in my own word(Any correction would be greatly appreciated!):
At times, employees might get a spike in workloads to a point where they have to work more hours than it requires for their regular duty assignment. When such situation arises, it may requires a full shift of eight(8) hours or more on two or more consecutive days, even including the unscheduled days if required. So, while dealing with such workload, an employee's tour of duty shall be altered to get more hour to complete such work. However, no compromise shall be done if any adverse impact results due to the absence of employee from his previously scheduled assignment.
And as always, Thank you very much, Richard for your munificence! English learners would definitely be grateful for your kind help!:)
