Clear communication

What words and phrases confuse you at work?

The language that I find unclear at work tends to be the language that you would use in your everyday life to maybe appear polite. However, I am the type of person who does use these types of words and this language in my everyday.

I guess every industry has lots of jargon, and certain things mean different things to different parts of the same industry, and it's not always clear what is actually being talked about.

Today we're talking about how to ask questions and clarify things at work.

Hello and welcome to Office English from BBC Learning English. We're back to talk about the language you need in the workplace. I'm Pippa.

And I'm Phil. Read along with this podcast using the transcript at

So Phil, we heard from our BBC Learning English colleagues at the start of the programme about the kind of language they find unclear. Neil finds jargon unclear, and Becca says polite language can be unclear, although she still uses it a lot at work.

So, Pippa, what words and phrases or ways of speaking do you find unclear at work?

Well, I think similar to Becca, some polite phrases can be confusing. For example, saying things like perhaps and maybe. I think these can be useful when you're discussing things, but then I think you need somebody to make a decision and be clear with their language at the end of the discussion. Otherwise you never know which 'perhaps' which 'maybe' we should be doing.

Yes, definitely. I think Neil said something interesting about jargon as well, because if you're suddenly working with people you don't normally work with, and maybe they have different jargon and different acronyms, and everyone else understands what's going on and you don't, it can that can be, that can be very difficult because it can be hard to say 'sorry, can you explain that?'

Um, yes. So in this episode, we'll discuss how to make sure that what you're saying is clear and how to clarify things. That means make sure that you understand. OK. Let's start with emails and written language. Phil, imagine you receive an email from a colleague at work with some information that you need for your job, but you find the email unclear and you're not sure if you've understood things correctly. What's the best approach?

OK, well, I guess the first thing to do is just make sure that you've read the email properly. Maybe you get loads of emails in a day and you read through them quite quickly, and we don't always read them very well when we do that.

Um, yeah. I suppose another thing you can do is check with a colleague. So just sense checking with somebody next to you is helpful.

And then you can also often try to speak to the person who sent you the email. Maybe it's an email they sent to loads of people and you just want to, you don't want to bother everyone else.

And you can also, of course, reply to the email or maybe reply just specifically to that person rather than reply all and saying something like 'when you say this, do you mean this?' So say what they've said and then say what you've understood for comparison, and they will very quickly tell you whether you've understood it correctly or not.

OK, that's written communication. But what about spoken language? Often we have meetings and informal conversations at work where you might be confused about what someone has said or asked you. So how can we deal with that?

Well, I think how you deal with this might depend on the context, whether, as you say, it's an informal chat, whether it's a big meeting with lots of people. I would usually say that it's best to clarify things in the moment. It's much easier to clear up any misunderstanding straight after someone's spoken because they'll remember what they were talking about. So, you probably need to interrupt in that case. And you can say, 'could I just stop you for a moment? I just want to clarify something'.

Also, it might be something that you want to do later if you want to do it outside the meeting or you don't feel that you can speak up in front of everyone else. Um, and you might want to say something like, 'can I just check I understood something' or 'are we on the same page? I want to make sure that we understand things the same way'.

Yeah. That expression are we on the same page is really nice. It just basically means do we understand things in the same way? Are we looking at things from the same perspective? You can also ask things like, 'am I hearing you right?' or 'I just want to get this straight'. Those all basically mean the same thing, which is I just want to check I understand things. So we've talked about clarifying what other people are saying so that things are clear. but how can you make sure that what you're saying is clear, Phil?

OK, well, let's start by thinking about emails. Um, I think in emails, the key thing to do is keep your language as simple as possible. Stick to what you want to ask about. Keep your sentences short. You can use subjects. You can use headings. You can use lists. Sometimes it can be quite useful when you're replying to someone, you can copy their questions in and just respond underneath them so that everything links together nicely. Just think about how you can make it clear for the other person. The great thing about email is there are no rules so you can do things with like bold and different colours if you think that's going to help things.

Yeah. And avoid overly informal language or vague phrases.

And then of course, in speaking, I think it's really important to think about your role and your function. So if, for example, you're the person making the decision, you have to communicate that decision in a fairly simple and quite a direct way quite often, just so that it's really clear to everyone what's been decided, what has to happen when it has to happen, etc.

Yeah. So for example, if you're asking someone to do a task, um, after a discussion, you can use more direct language. So ask, 'can you do this?' not 'would it be okay if you did this?' Um, it's much more direct for people.

Often we've said that you want to be indirect, sometimes at work, to appear more polite or to make sure that you're not offending anyone. And that might be really important in the discussion stage. But actually, yeah, once it comes to a decision, the most important thing is clarity. That is the key to anything.

Yeah. Another thing you can do to make sure that you're clear when you're speaking is to repeat the important information. So just say oh, 'to be clear' and then repeat yourself or 'to clarify' and then kind of rephrase what you've said. What about, Phil, if someone asks you to clarify? So say you've sent an email or you've said something in a meeting and you get a question about it.

If it's an email, particularly, look at what you said the first time around, realise what might not have been clear in how you said it, and say it in a different way so that you can make it clearer or make it simpler. You might need to pick out the key points. Um, obviously that's easy in an email. You can look at what you've done. But you'll often find when you're speaking the first time you say something, you're kind of working out how to say it. Um, the second time you can be a lot more kind of direct, and you've already worked out what you want to say.

That's it for this episode of Office English. Find more programmes to improve

Next time we'll talk about going beyond your job description at work. Bye for now.

Bye.