There are No Reliable Words

To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up. — George Orwell

Love this quote. This is exactly why a good business analyst will find ways to use visual models to increase the precision and clarity of documented communication. You and I can look at the same paragraph of text and come away with very different mental models of what the words describe.

If I sketch what I understood, then we can begin to see and meaningfully discuss the differences in interpretation. Using visuals is a way of calibrating shared understanding. Combining words with visuals can eliminate much of the ambiguity springing from having “no reliable words” as Orwell describes.

#Communication #documentation #visualization #writing