Congressman Xavier Becerra’s web site was recognized as best among the house membership by the Congressional Management Foundation. Heady stuff. Mr. Becerra is proud enough of this fact to trumpet it on his quarterly (print) newsletter, so I decided to have a look, navigated to said website, and fired off a message via the handy email form (which inexplicably required my nine-digit zip; five digits wasn’t enough).
The auto-response made the wrong impression.
Dear Jon,
I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with me. Know that my staff and I treat your communication as effective tools to monitor the thoughts, wishes and needs of the community.
Thank for your dedication. I look forward to further communication.
Sincerely,
XAVIER BECERRA
Member of Congress
There’s a lot wrong with that “know that my staff” sentence.
- “Know that my staff and I…” : This is pretty good, but the “know that” construction is deeply affected.
- ”..treat your communication as effective tools…” : You’ve a singular communication being treated as plural tools. Neat trick. Also, treating my communication as a tool is akin to pretending. Treating it as an effective tool underscores the pretending. “We pretend that your communication matters.”
- “…to monitor the thoughts, wishes and needs of the community.” : Ah, but my one communication doesn’t represent anyone but me. Others may agree, but this is one message.
- What is unsaid : I’ll read it. I’ll get back to you. My staffers aggregate these and give me a report. Something to expect.
The law is (supposed to be) an instrument of plain language, but even in the simplest of messages we see little of it. Mr. Becerra, how about saying simply:
Dear Jon,
Thank you for our message. My staff collects these messages and I read them all every week or so. I respond to some of them personally, but I cannot attend to every message individually.
I welcome your future comments.
Sincerely,
XAVIER BECERRA
Member of Congress
For more on this topic, see the good old The Importance of Being Frequestly Fractal at Metacool.