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Tash
Take care with huge claims!
It will be my son’s birthday soon and we’ve been looking for a present for him – he adores Lego so we want to get him some miscellaneous bits to play with as well as the sets he already has.
Our search moved onto eBay where we found some listings for bulk lots of Lego.
My son has a lot of Lego – yet I wouldn’t describe it as a huge bulk lot of Lego!
A few items suited what we wanted and we placed some bids.
Other items didn’t suit so we moved on.
A number of items listed as ‘huge bulk lot’ (yes, there were more than four or five of them! And all seemingly from the same seller) amazed us 🙂
Over promising doesn’t get the sales
What does huge mean? It is something of great size or quantity.
And what does bulk mean? Again, it is about size and, in the context of purchasing items, means a large quantity of something.
So when I look for bulk Lego, I expect hundreds of bricks or even kilograms of Lego.
I don’t consider six wheels or 13 small pieces of Lego to be a ‘huge bulk lot’. Yet the aforementioned seller apparently thinks differently to me!
Needless to say, we’re not interested in buying tiny ‘bulk’ packs of Lego.
Calling his packs of Lego ‘huge bulk lots’ may have attracted people wanting bulk lots – but it wouldn’t be bought by them.
While people after smaller packs of specific bits of Lego wouldn’t necessarily search for bulk packs.
Either way, the seller isn’t using a smart strategy in my opinion.
Over use of adjectives
Adjectives can be useful for providing information and making writing more interesting.
Yet there are two details to remember…
- the adjectives need to be honest and actually describe the noun(s) or the writing just loses credibility
- too many adjectives is not helpful. People start to glaze over when there are too many together – I know that in my busy life, I don’t have time to wade through lots of meaningless adjectives to find out the information I really want so I’m less likely to read something that appears hyped up.
How’s your business – do you add adjectives to hype up a product or keep them to a meaningful minimum? Maybe you have tested it and found lots of adjectives sells more – if so, I’d love to hear your experiences!
Production English
Last night I heard of production English for the first time and am quite fascinated with it.
New country, new language
When many people arrive in Australia, they learn English to be able to communicate with other people who live here. English classes teach them things like ‘hello, how are you?’, ‘can I please buy…?’ and ‘where is the library?’
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
I assume the same thing happens for most people who move to a country with a language different to their own.
How would you interpret this situation if you couldn’t read much English? Safety can be jeopardised if people can’t read or understand notices.
What about less generic language?
The challenge really starts when people need more specific language – the words and phrases you don’t get in beginner classes.
For instance, trying to follow a procedure or read instructions on machinery can be quite difficult if you only have basic English.
Especially once you consider grammar and similar words (that is, homonyms and other potentially confusing words that I define in Monday Meanings) can make it even harder to understand – just like pilots can have trouble if English is not their native tongue.
The story I heard last night was about a group of people who work well at their jobs but are sometimes limited or put at risk by the fact that they don’t have ‘production English’ to help them at work.
Obviously, ensuring that procedures and instructions are written as simply and clearly as possible is one aspect – and still a very important task.
Yet it is also critical to help such people learn relevant words in English. And there are programs in Melbourne now that are working on solving this issue, at least for some groups of immigrants.
Does your business have procedures or instructions that would be challenging for someone with only basic English?
* Image courtesy of 123RF
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