Direct Mail Piece Stinks Up My Mailbox

Posted January 6, 2011 | Laura Christianson

Here’s a whopping bad example of putrid prose from a direct mail piece I received. The following sentence is an amendment to a Custodial Account Agreement for my retirement fund:

The Custodian shall vote all shares that are held in the Participant’s custodial Account on the applicable record date for which proper instructions have not been timely received from the Participant in the same proportion as the Custodian has been instructed to vote the shares in other custodial accounts for which it serves as custodian for which it has received timely instructions from depositors.

What’s wrong with this prose?

EVERYTHING!

The entire paragraph is one sentence.

Bad, bad, bad. The above sentence is 64 words. Waaaay too long.

  • When you draft prose, whether it’s an amendment to the Constitution or a sentence in a novel, keep your sentence lengths manageable.
  • Try opening with an extremely short sentence (one-word, two-word or three-word sentences really pop), and following up with a lengthier sentence.

The sentence uses legalese.

Pet peeve alert! Legalese – the “insider” jargon people use within a particular industry – drives me nuts. So much so that I wrote an entire blog post called, “10 popular phrases you must immediately delete from your writing.”

Why can’t they speak plain English? After all, the audience for this so-called information is me, the retirement fund owner.

The company that mailed this piece to me put the amendment on a separate postcard, all by itself. They must have thought it was really, really important. I’ve read this piece at least five times, and cannot make heads or tails of it. If you can’t say it in plain, simple English, don’t say it at all.

How would you rewrite this piece?

Your assignment: Collect samples of Putrid Prose and send them to me. If I feature your sample, I’ll include a short bio about you and a link to your site. Let’s have fun with this!

Return to Posts

4 responses to “Direct Mail Piece Stinks Up My Mailbox”

  1. Marty Longe says:

    Laura, here is a proposed rewrite for the Custodial Account Agreement:

    “Participating depositors have a limited amount of time to vote. If they do not file their vote by the assigned due date, the Custodian will vote on the Participant’s behalf. The Custodian will vote all the shares that are held in the Participant’s custodial Account. The Custodian will vote using the same proportion as was used in previous votes, according to whatever instructions were previously provided by the Participant.”

    I “think” that’s what it says. As you mentioned in your blog article, the main problem with long sentences that use technical jargon is the confusion they cause. Short sentences using simple words, written in a basic, step-by-step pattern are much easier to understand.

    You asked for more putrid prose. Here’s a little tidbit from the UW Teaching Forum:

    “Operationally, teaching effectiveness is measured by assessing the levels of agreement between the perceptions of instructors and students on the rated ability of specific instructional behavior attributes which were employed during course instruction. Due to the fact that instructors come from diverse backgrounds and occupy different positions within a given university, both individual and organizational based factors may contribute to the variance in levels of agreement between perceptions.”

    I haven’t the faintest idea what they are talking about.

  2. Marty Longe says:

    Laura, here is a proposed rewrite for the Custodial Account Agreement:

    “Participating depositors have a limited amount of time to vote. If they do not file their vote by the assigned due date, the Custodian will vote on the Participant’s behalf. The Custodian will vote all the shares that are held in the Participant’s custodial Account. The Custodian will vote using the same proportion as was used in previous votes, according to whatever instructions were previously provided by the Participant.”

    I “think” that’s what it says. As you mentioned in your blog article, the main problem with long sentences that use technical jargon is the confusion they cause. Short sentences using simple words, written in a basic, step-by-step pattern are much easier to understand.

    You asked for more putrid prose. Here’s a little tidbit from the UW Teaching Forum:

    “Operationally, teaching effectiveness is measured by assessing the levels of agreement between the perceptions of instructors and students on the rated ability of specific instructional behavior attributes which were employed during course instruction. Due to the fact that instructors come from diverse backgrounds and occupy different positions within a given university, both individual and organizational based factors may contribute to the variance in levels of agreement between perceptions.”

    I haven’t the faintest idea what they are talking about.

  3. Good try on deciphering this, Marty!

    I’m laughing over the one you submitted from the UW. My interpretation:

    “We measure the success of the course based on how well the teacher met the course goals and how well the students completed those goals. But because our teachers have varying degrees of ability, we’re going to give them lots of wiggle room.”

    Or something like that. What a shame that our esteemed institutions of higher learning (particularly the Teaching Forum) would dare to publish such a tangled mess of educationese.

  4. Good try on deciphering this, Marty!

    I’m laughing over the one you submitted from the UW. My interpretation:

    “We measure the success of the course based on how well the teacher met the course goals and how well the students completed those goals. But because our teachers have varying degrees of ability, we’re going to give them lots of wiggle room.”

    Or something like that. What a shame that our esteemed institutions of higher learning (particularly the Teaching Forum) would dare to publish such a tangled mess of educationese.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *