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The wine bottle

11/3/2011

1 Comment

 
Posted by Jon
I spent a rather lovely day out grape-picking recently – a birthday present last December from my friend Carrie that had to wait to be enjoyed until the autumnal harvest was ready. I say ‘picking’ – we did a little of that, but it’s perhaps fair to say that the subsequent tour of the winery (yes, we do make wine in England!) and tasting consumed the larger portion of the time we spent at the vineyard.

Later, we went for dinner with her partner, and decided that more wine was called for – and on the list, I spied this rather complex explanation:​
​After a huge investment of both time and money this wine is now presented with a stelvin closure to preserve freshness and purity of fruit, whilst also avoiding the possibility of cork taint.
​Anyone guess what that means?

Yep, you got it: “Screw cap.”

It sounds like the sort of thing I read in proposals all too often – content contributors feeling the need to write over-elaborate text, incorporating jargon wherever possible, as if doing so makes them sound clever. And, of course, it usually achieves the exact opposite. Never forget to keep it simple!
1 Comment
Scott Knitter, AM.APMP
3/25/2016 03:25:23 pm

One sort of over-elaboration I often find is the attempt to make some work sound like a whole lot of work:

“We have collaborated and strategized with our top-tier software partners to determine the optimal solution.”

…which could really mean…

“One of us emailed a friend at Microsoft, who recommended the best software package.”

Granted, you wouldn’t put it the second way in a proposal, but a lot of -ating and -izing makes it sound like we went through quite an ordeal just for you, Customer! Even if it was really rather quick and simple.

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    BJ Lownie and Jon Williams are the co-founders of Strategic Proposals.

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