Back in the early days of USENET Newsgroups, I remember a consensus that, with the coming of international connectivity, world peace was sure to follow. We would all get to know each other better, and so we would all get along.

When we think of email lists these days, the discussion is not usually of their remarkable peacefulness, but of why there is so much flaming on the Web.

What went wrong?

There is a lesson in this for plain language practitioners. Winston Churchill summed it up when he called America and England "two nations divided by a common language."

We do not all think alike. There are real cultural differences. When there are genuine differences, clarity will mean dispute. Diplomats are not notorious, traditionally, for plain speech.

This does not mean plain speech should be avoided in international communications. It does mean we must be sensitive to some new issues.

Phatic communication

One is indeed diplomacy. Look at three examples of a sentence with the same informational content:

Wait in the outer office.
Wait in the outer office, please.
Would you wait in the outer office?
Would you mind waiting in the outer office?

Each sentence is longer than the last. Only the first obviously follows Strunk's famous command, to "Omit needless words." ⁽¹⁾

Yet the additional words are only needless if you think of language as a tool for communicating facts. The longer sentences actually do contain additional value. Can we say what it is?