Thursday, June 18, 2009

Unnecessary superfluous redundancy

My work exposes me to some really dire language. The latest sample:

This is a multilateral collaborative partnership

As opposed to a unilateral collaborative partnership? Or a multilateral adversarial partnership? Or a multilateral collaborative rivalry?

The rest of the sentence is pretty bad as well:

This is a multilateral collaborative partnership with the aim to advance scientific knowledge and management of human influenza through integrated clinical research in order to improve patient care and human health.

A hideous spiral of confusion between means and ends. Or perhaps it’s indifference rather than confusion, coupled with the desire to be seen to be using certain buzz-phrases. That attitude would certainly explain the pleonastic pile-up at the start.

This has been written by someone who wouldn’t survive five minutes outside the confines of a large corporate bureaucracy.

2 comments:

jams o donnell said...

Tom

may I suggest playing bullshit bingo. On more than one occasion it has made presentations and seminars pass a little easier. It may help when reading this sort of utter rot

Anonymous said...

Don't you have any research aimed at increasing patient neglect and illness?