Customer Service English

By Jason Lim

I have a Korean friend who just graduated from a masters program in America. Struggling with her final papers recently, she told me something that I had heard countless times before from other Korean students.

She said, "When I read articles written by some famous American academics, they read so easily. It doesn't look difficult at all. I wish I could write as simply and effortlessly."

Don't we all? But, unfortunately, many more academics write in a "stream of consciousness" style in which they layer subordinate clauses on top of other subordinate clauses until you lose track of who is doing what to whom. Never mind the why's and how's.

Being in academia and government, I can certainly attest to coming across a lot of papers that force me to read each sentence twice or three times. Even then, I am often left with an uneasy sensation of not having grasped everything that the author was intending to say.

Or worse, I dismiss the merit of whatever idea or proposal contained in the paper because my eyes would simply refuse to track the shifting pronouns hiding under blankets of dangling modifiers.

But who are we to throw stones? We have all done it before, usually for a school paper when we had to fill a blank page to reach the required word count. Or for that white paper for the boss when we tried to camouflage lack of substance with wordiness.

But contrary to my friend's wish, we all know that writing simply is certainly not effortless. It takes much more forethought and skill to write simply yet deliver the entire intended message. Even more, it takes a fundamental shift in how to approach writing.

The shift can best be explained by discussing the two main tenets of customer service. You might think that customer service has nothing do to with writing, but you would be wrong.

One, customer service is all about the customer. In writing, the customer is your intended audience. So you always have to ask, "Who is the primary audience for my writing?" Then, who is the secondary audience? You have to write so that all your intended audience understands what you are trying to say.

This is especially important in today's globalized work environment. Don't use language or cultural references that will not be understood, or even misunderstood, by someone else. If you have to use one, make sure to contextualize it so that it could be universally understood.

Remember that famous story of a GM executive puzzled over why Chevy car model named Nova was not selling well in Mexico? Don't be that guy. Oops, an unexplained cultural reference. Sorry.

Two, customer service is all about making it easy for the customer. This means that you have to organize your writing so that it's easy for your audience to understand the message.

In other words, don't write to show off how well you can construct complex sentences and jump over huge logical gaps. It's easy to write complex sentences that go nowhere. It's much more difficult to write simple, short sentences that lead to a definite, logical conclusion.

Unfortunately, students are usually taught that complex English sentences are more erudite; in contrast, simple and short sentences are supposedly not as sophisticated.

Further, by giving higher grades to those papers in which sentences are more complex and convoluted, teachers often create incentives for students to write badly.

But to write well, you have to organize your writing to serve your audience's need. Of course, organizing your thoughts is really difficult. It means that you have to examine all the different parts of your argument to see if they make logical sense for your audience.

Often, they don't, which means that you have to start over. And when faced with the prospect of a deadline and blank pages, starting over is no fun. That's why we frequently try to gloss over logical fallacies with GRE words. Darn, another unexplained cultural reference. This is hard!

True, writing is hard. But once you understand that writing is not for you but for your "customer," you can use some simple tools to make writing easier. The following are five useful guidelines that I wish I remember more often.

□ Use headings and subtitles. They make for wonderful changeovers when you are fresh out of conjunctions and transitions.

□ Use lists and tables to make your point. Visual aids like graphs are also great.

□ Use short sentences and paragraphs. Also remember to deal with only one idea per paragraph.

□ Use familiar words and avoid being wordy.

□ Use pronouns such as "you" and we" to engage the reader on a personal level.

Jason Lim is a research fellow at the Harvard Korea Institute, researching Asian leadership models. He can be reached at jasonlim@post.harvard.edu.