Talk Normal Stop the Business Speak, Jargon and Waffle

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Tim Phillips has been a journalist for 20 years, and during that time he has been slowly driven crazy by bad spokespeople: the jargon, the evasiveness, the inability to make a point or to answer a direct question. Now that every company has a small army dedicated to communications, the problem seems to be getting worse. That's why we should stop thinking about spin and management, and start concentrating on talking like human beings. Is this possible? Talk Normal is an attempt to find out. Based on the author's blog, www.talknormal.co.uk it's full of excruciating examples of corporate jargon, and it will help you to steer a path to better communication, whilst coping with the worst excesses of management speak at work.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Foreword (p. v)
• Introduction (p. 1)
• Talk Normal: why we bother (p. 1)
• The meaning of Talknormalism (p. 2)
• 1 Trying to sound clever (p. 5)
• Jargon: can't live with it, can't live without it (p. 5)
• Catching jargon (p. 10)
• Say what you mean, mean what you say (p. 21)
• The problem of word obesity (p. 27)
• Deceived by weasels (p. 35)
• Talknormalise me (p. 38)
• 2 Office life (p. 45)
• Work/life balance (p. 45)
• Things have changed around here (p. 48)
• How HR ruined your life (p. 60)
• What they say to you, and what they really mean (p. 68)
• Talknormalise me (p. 79)
• 3 Mediocre media (p. 87)
• The old school (p. 87)
• The explainers (p. 89)
• The entertainers (p. 108)
• The socialises (p. 116)
• Talknormalise me (p. 122)
• 4 Tell and sell (p. 131)
• Buy More S**t or We're All F**ked (p. 131)
• Happy talking (p. 137)
• Shiny new things (p. 149)
• The buzzword wars (p. 156)
• Talknormalise me (p. 167)
• Appendix: heroes of Talknormalism (p. 171)
• Ten books that help (p. 171)
• Ten websites that help (p. 174)