Don't Give Me Gobbledygook!

 Pronunciation: GOB-ul-dee-GOOK

I always seem to flip through this book I read for my social media class called, The New Rules of Marketing & PR, written by David Meerman Scott. Unlike most other textbooks I have read, this one is pretty easy-to-read and interesting. 

One word that caught my eye when I was skimming through some of the pages was Gobbledygook.  

In a nutshell, Gobbledygook is a term that is used to describe any type of writing that is considered "incomprehensible" or "jargon". It's not something you want your writing to be referred to. 

After reading about this term, I thought to myself, "Have I ever written anything with Gobbledygook?" The answer? OF COURSE I HAVE! It's not something I am proud of, but it is definitely something I have done in the past and probably do from time to time today. 

Courtesy of About.comhttp://search.about.com/?q=Gobbledygook

 "Because these writers don’t understand how their products solve customer problems, they cover by explaining how the product works and pepper this blather with industry jargon." - David Meerman Scott  

This is a quote I took from David Meerman Scott. He is explaining how companies use their industry jargon (also known as Gobbledygook) in order to avoid dealing with customer's problems. Instead of directing answering a question, they ignore the problem and just answer with a bunch of Gobbledygook normal humans (like myself) wouldn't understand about a product. 

Great example of Gobbledygook: 

"Where the combined value of the above payments before actual assimilation remains greater than the combined value of the payments after assimilation, the former level of pay will be protected. These protection arrangements apply to the combined value of payments before and after assimilation, not to individual pay components, excepting the provision relating to retention of existing on-call arrangements."
("Agenda for Change," Central Manchester and Manchester Children’s University Hospitals NHS Trust) 

Do you know what that means? Yeah, me either. 

Have you ever dealt with a Gobbledygook situation? How did you deal with it? Share it with me!