I was watching the Mary Portas show recently in which she persuaded a firm of estate agents to better serve house buyers, principally by being honest in their product descriptions and preparing properly for viewings. I like Portas's approach, and of course it's good TV, but I wasn't sure about how she tackled the issue of misleading product descriptions, by banning estate-agent-speak.
It has always astounded me how estate agents' particulars are so mired in cliché. Even the word particulars is itself part of the problem.
Phrases such as 'well appointed', 'deceptively spacious' or 'in our opinion, the property affords easy access to town centre amenities' can be annoying, and smack of laziness.
But because this kind of language is so widespread, almost expected, isn't it the case that everyone knows how to read it (cosy = small, in our opinion = you probably won't think so)? In fact, Portas did a little voxpop that confirmed this. In which case, what has estate-agent-speak to do with dishonesty, or even a lack of transparency?
The business world is full of cliches – however much we complain about them, they are a shorthand that everyone in that world buys into (sic). There's a homely sort of reassurance when conversing in business-speak – the feeling of speaking the other person's language, of forming your own club. And where would news reporting be without tired cliches – 'shocked onlookers', 'car crash horror', 'heartless thieves' and so forth. People have 'fights with cancer' and traffic wardens have 'a thankless task'. We are forced to consume this kind of tired language, understanding it implicitly to be a lazy shorthand which paints a rough picture - we're not supposed to take literally.
I'm all for saying no to lazy writing – in business, in journalism – but I don't think it's necessarily a symptom of deception or dishonesty. On the other hand, if there is dishonesty it’s not going to be eliminated by banning cliches.
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