Weasel verbs rob your prose of meaning and power

This is the second of a series of articles about effective writing for businesses and organisations.

We write for reasons, and the reasons are important.

We write bids to win work, press releases to get attention, and reports to describe opportunities or threats, and to call for action.

So, the writing must be effective, or we don’t get the result we want.

Everyone can agree on that. But what is effective writing? Here, views diverge.

My view is that effective writing is simple, precise, accessible, and efficient. The reader finds what’s written interesting, and can easily consume it.

But judging by much of the prose pumped out in business and organisational life today, that’s a minority view.

Here, it seems that effective writing is judged to be writing that conforms to a certain style, which feels “proper”.

The problem is, this dominant style consists of habits that make prose ambiguous, monotonous and hard to read, all of which flouts the purpose of writing.

One of those habits is the use of what I call “weasel verbs”.

Why verbs matter

Verbs are precious because they tell us what someone has done or intends to do. When somebody does or says something, the world changes, even if only by a little bit.

It alters the mesh of circumstances we operate in, however slightly or profoundly.

“What did she say to that?” we want to know. “What did he do then?”

Weasel verbs are made-up verbs that that have a snazzy ring and imply action, but whose meanings are strategically hazy.

Chief executives love them.

Consider the following statements, all made in October by CEOs or CFOs of Fortune 500 companies, commenting on their third-quarter results.

They all lead organisations that are under pressure amid the pandemic, and they’ve been called on to rouse their people and inspire confidence among investors by describing what their company has done and what it plans to do.

“Delivering annualised synergies”

“As we enter the fourth quarter … we will again leverage the commercial and operating strengths … with a focus on cash generation and maintaining a strong balance sheet."

“We remain fully on track in … delivering in excess of $100 million of annualized synergies and savings from our previously announced cost optimization initiative by the end of 2021.”

“We leveraged strong demand and focused cost control to deliver profitable growth.”

“The recent announcement … underscores our commitment to delivering value and service to our brand partners and their customers.”

“ … we can focus our collective energy on executing through operational initiatives to improve [our] performance and create long term value for our stockholders.”

“We remain laser focused on increasing shareholder value by sustaining growth momentum, driving meaningful innovations that leverage consumer trends, building a competitive edge through omni-channel and significantly reducing organizational complexity.”

“With a continued focus on execution, we anticipate a fourth quarter underscored by additional cash generation and operating leverage across our core segments driven by additional cost savings.”

Anything or nothing

There seems to be plenty of important-sounding action going on here: lots of leveraging, focussing, executing, optimising, underscoring, driving and delivering.

But the verbs are abstract. They can mean anything, or nothing. I call them weasel verbs because they hint at action but won’t be pinned down.

They allow writers to bolt one set of abstractions onto another set of abstractions to create lengthy stretches of multisyllabic meaninglessness.

Real verbs project vivid pictures onto a screen in our minds; weasel verbs project only grey smudges.

Are we going to be roused and inspired by the delivery of annualised synergies and the underscoring of operating leverage?

Specific and charged

Consider the words of another leader of an organisation under pressure, one who badly needed to get a result from his words.

On the 4th of June 1940, Winston Churchill, just three weeks into his job as prime minister, got to his feet in parliament to try and elicit a national response to the unstoppable Nazi advance in Europe.

Invasion of the British Isles seemed imminent and yet the country was in two minds over whether to fight or to surrender and seek terms.

Recall how he ended his lengthy and detailed statement to the House: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender …”

There could be no doubt as to what he thought Britons must do, to whom, and where.

“Fight” meant one thing: kill or be killed.

And this dread action was to be carried out in the places Britons knew intimately and could no longer take for granted.

His words were specific, concrete, and carried an emotional charge. And they worked.

Now, imagine if Churchill had said: “We shall be focussed on leveraging our synergies to optimise our performance in the necessary engagement environments.”

There’d have been blank looks all round.

Opportunities lost

Is this too far-fetched a comparison? I don’t think so.

Businesses and organisations face challenges, and they are comprised of people. People respond to language, or not, so writing needs to be effective relative to its aim.

Chief executives may want to be vague and non-committal when quarterly report time rolls around: to be able to hint at action without being pinned down.

But this sort of language permeates organisational discourse and I worry that crucial opportunities to rouse and inspire people are being lost.

Tip: Choose real, ordinary verbs of the kind a child would understand. If you’re not sure about a verb, find a child and see if they know what it means. Using real verbs forces you to use real words for the rest of the sentence, too, and when you do that, meaning and power start to seep back into your prose.

Also in this series:

Buzzwords, ticks and clichés: Why you should shun them for effective writing