• communication (what type of communication?)
• deal with, handle (how?)
• profound, significant, deep, extensive, intensive (by what measure?)
• in a timely manner, recently (when?)
• experts say (what experts?)
• research shows (what research?)

In ?owerful Questions, Christo Norden-Powers urges writers to be very critical and wary of fuzzy words. One example he gives is two sentences from an internal National Australia Bank (NAB) market risk report in November 2003. This report to an executive committee was written several months before the bank’s Forex trading losses of $360 million were made public. The NAB’s losses were associated with rogue trading, where trades were made outside the bank’s guidelines over a period of time.

"At the time of writing, [Global Markets Division] trading operations continue to manage risk responsibly in changing market conditions. Adherence to risk discipline is good."

Christo Norden-Powers takes these sentences apart and questions what words and phrases mean. For example, he asks questions such as: What trading operations specifically are you referring to? Which market conditions are changing? How specifically are they changing? What specifically are you doing to manage those changing conditions responsibly?

Labels: specific words, writing

posted by Unknown @ 11:03 PM