Fight the Bull!
As I have covered before, our choice of words is critical. This point again was echoed in my conversation with John Care (see The Perfect Pitch section). Even with this knowledge firmly in mind, I still find “bull” words creeping into my articles and emails.
Help is here! I came across a great little utility called Bullfighter. It’s an add-in for Word and PowerPoint that searches for “filtered, jargon-filled corporate speak.” I’m using it with Office 2007.
Simply install the application and run the utility on any documents you want reviewed. It works very much like Spellchecker and even makes replacement suggestions—very cool! You can also get a score (called a Bull Index) on your document before and after you run it.
I also really like that it attempts to analyze your writing style by measuring average word count per sentence and average syllables per word. These scores will force your attention on being concise and using plain language.
I plan on using this on all my articles and lengthier emails and will track my scores over time. I’ll post my results in a brief follow-up.
One thing I did notice right away is how many words it considers “bull” that I wouldn’t have considered. I even started arguing internally a bit :). That is to say, if nothing else, it’ll make you think.
Enjoy! I would love to hear any personal results you achieve. Just for the record, here is my score for this article:
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Filed under: Marketing, Soft Skills
