How long does it take to say "no"?
A customer in England wrote to a company asking if it sold blank CDs. All she wanted was a simple yes or no. Instead, she received this reply.
"We are currently in the process of consolidating our product range to ensure that the products that we stock are indicative of our brand aspirations. As part of our range consolidation we have also decided to revisit our supplier list and employ a more intelligent system for stock acquisition. As a result of the above certain product lines are now unavailable through jungle.com, whilst potentially remaining available from more mainstream suppliers."
This response earned the company the Golden Bull award from the Plain English Campaign, a British group dedicated to promoting plain language.
The Golden Bull award is given each year to the worst example of communication.
The Foot in Mouth award is given to the most baffling piece of communication.
This year's winner was a British politician who said: "I could not fail to disagree with you less."
This was the first time in several years that the award has crossed the Atlantic. Americans have been the usual winners, one of whom was Donald Rumsfield, who said:
"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns the ones we don't know we don't know."
To read more about the awards, visit http://www.plainenglish.co.uk.
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