Ban the bull: skilled for Health

Good intentions may or may not pave the road to hell, but evidently they can sometimes be wrapped up in some seriously bewildering prose.

On its website, the Department of Health outlines its Skilled for Health programme. This aims to make sure people with lower levels of literacy, language and numeracy skills are as able to access everything the health service has to offer as anyone else.

Fantastic stuff.

Unfortunately, on the site, the DoH goes on to describe one of the aims of Skilled for Health like this:

Enhanced engagement in learning

• to use health improvement topics that embed Skills for Life learning as an incentive to engage and recruit individuals who do not traditionally participate in adult learning initiatives, with a view to supporting them to progressing into other learning opportunities – including, where appropriate, a Skills for Life qualification-based outcome.

Trying to wade through that may be enough to make anyone question their literacy skills.

Since the goal is to encourage people to do something, using ‘doing’ words (verbs) is a good start. Instead of ‘enhanced engagement in learning’, try ‘engaging people in learning’. Rather than ‘a Skills for Life qualification-based outcome’, how about ‘earning a Skills for Life qualification’ or, simply, ‘learning with Skills for Life’.

Consider swapping large, unwieldy words like ‘traditionally’ and ‘participate’ for more everyday versions, like ‘usually’ and ‘take part in’. And don’t try to do in one sentence what is better done in two. Remember: one sentence, one idea.

Imagine one of the people behind the programme was asked by an interested associate or friend to explain the aims of the venture over a cup of coffee. If they expressed it as above, by the time they had finished, their acquaintance would be none the wiser and their coffee would probably be cold. Writing more as we speak – though not universally appropriate – makes our writing more ‘human’, as well as easy to understand in just one reading.

In fact, back in the cafe, it would probably go something more like this:

Engaging people in learning

• to encourage people who don’t usually take part in adult learning initiatives to do so, by engaging them on topics of healthy living and Skills for Life. Ideally, this could include supporting them in further learning opportunities, including earning a Skills for Life qualification, if appropriate.

Calling all Write Away readers: we need your bull

Whenever you trip over any truly turgid or baffling business-speak, think of us. (You know what we mean, don’t you?) Send in any examples for us to unravel, and you’ll receive a free copy of our style guide, The Write Stuff. And don’t worry, we can leave names out of it if you’d rather.