11th October 2023
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You may have strong views – very strong views – on the content of this letter.
But take a moment to admire the form and structure of this letter – and, in particular, its brevity.
It is a misconception that longer formal communications are more powerful than shorter communications.
Indeed, sometimes in legal practice the most forceful communications can comprise only a few sentences.
The skill is to make good points succinctly and plainly.
For as another Frenchman once wrote:
“Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.”
(This [letter] is long because I did not have enough time to make it short.)
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And, of course, the application of this skill is not limited to formal documents:
Arkell v. Pressdram comes to mind. Sometimes answers can be both concise *and* colourful…
Alas, Arkell v. Pressdram is more folklore than law.
It’s not only the length that’s important – its directness is impressive.
Often, the fluff that people include – and are encouraged to include – causes confusion, drawing attention away from the main point.
In my time in local government I felt that being told to “tone it down a bit” risked the message being lost or, at best, diluted.
What was interesting was when a brief message from me received a long, rambling response that didn’t answer the issues raised – particularly telling when you put them side by side.
Arkell and Private Eye show how things can be done.
What cannot be analysed on one page is not well thought through! Or as the Swedish writer Tegner said: obscure writing is the outcome of obscure thinking. So think before you write!
Brevity is the soul of communication. But brevity cannot carry the receipts, which are often detailed and turgid. This is why the executive summary was invented. Nobody is supposed to read the rest, except for the very necessary auditor types.
Is it in the power of the EU to blackout ‘X’? I do hope so.
The European Commission has no problem calling Hamas terrorists.
They are right.
This stands in contrast to the BBC. Mealy mouthed they refuse to call Hamas terrorists.
Their justification is that this means ‘taking sides’. But this is how you should respond to evil.
I note that in an earlier version of their justification posted on their news app they proudly proclaimed that during WW2 they never called the Nazis terrorists since this would have besmirched the BBC’s ‘impartiality’. Could this be the same Nazis responsible for massacres at Oradour and Lidice and, of course, the Holocaust.
I guess once you’ve let the Nazis off neutrality over Hamas is trivial.
I wasn’t around back then so may be wrong, but have difficulty imagining that it would have occurred to the BBC or anyone else to call the Nazis terrorists during the Second World War, much less to make a conscious policy decision not to do so for neutrality reasons. My impression is that the lamentable habit of pinning labels on opponents as an easy way of delegitimising them is of more recent origin. The terrorist label in particular is so devalued these days by overuse that it hardly matters whether the BBC applies it to Hamas or not, a pity, as distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate methods of seeking redress for grievances has not lost its importance.
As a former English-speaking official in the EU it often fell to my lot to either translate (though not a translator) or ‘clean up’ a letter to be sent in English. The culture was definitely not one of length for length’s sake: even in French, though unable to eliminate the flowery phrases required in official communications (“permit me to inform you, my dear Sirs, of the assurance of my most appropriate sentiments … ) the culture was very much “say it clearly, then stop”.
That said, I do wonder if this text shows the effect of a new shortage of native English speakers. I would not have allowed a text to go to my Commissioner with “We have, from qualified sources ..” (should be ‘reliable’) and there are also minor infelicities that a ‘qualified’ English speaker should be able to clean up from the text. Despite these quibbles, I do agree that this is a very clear and appropriate text.
“We have, from qualified sources …” (should be ‘reliable’)
Indeed. ‘Qualified sources’ conveys much the opposite meaning to that presumably intended – in English as it is spoken in the UK.
That, said, although English is one of the three procedural languages of the EU, it is not the first official language of any member state, and my knowledge if Irish and Maltese idiom is not good enough to tell me if the same idiom applies there.
As there is no equivalent of the Académie Française for English, the EU is free to develop its own conventional usage.
There is a world of difference between a qualified professional and a qualified statement. Which meaning the EU chooses to apply in this instance remains to be seen.
Short and sweet – for a ‘Dear Sir, unless’.
What is missing – ‘My Dad is bigger than your Dad’. We shall see.
The short succinct factual rather than the florid
‘The Geldolf Principle’
“Send us your F***ing money”
Live Aid
The BBC didn’t use the word ‘terrorist’ in WW2 because it was not then in current use.
Did a BBC communication really say that?
I presume the reason why the BBC doesn’t call Hamas ‘terrorists’ is because prima facie they are the elected government of Gaza.
But a great many countries have designated them a “terrorist organisation”. And the attack on Israel was one of terror. I feel uncomfortable with the BBC’s “militants,” which unfortunately sounds too close to “freedom fighters”.
“a post in praise of the one-page formal document” – yes, Orwell lives on!