There’s good news and bad news. First the bad news: “The tide of bullshit is rising.” I agree with Josh Bernoff, conceding that I have contributed to that elevation, to that tsunami of linguistic dung.

However, there is also good news: “The tide of bullshit is rising.” Especially now when the global marketplace seems more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than at any prior time that I can remember, being able to communicate without bullshit can be a decisive competitive advantage. A high level of literacy will certainly be conspicuous.

Why did Bernoff write Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean? “I want you to unlearn the bloated, jargon-laden style you’ve been steeped in so far and switch to an impactful, direct, clear, and engaging way of communicating.” Why? Because “the more noisy our environment gets — the more crap that’s out there — the more essential it is to respect the Iron Imperative [i.e. ‘Treat the reader’s time as more valuable than your own’]. Don’t waste your reader’s time. Boost your career by saying what you mean.”

Josh is the co-author of four books. Groundswell (HBR Press, 2008) was a bestseller. He also co-wrote The Mobile Mind Shift (Groundswell Press, 2014) and Empowered (HBR Press, 2010). Writing Without Bullshit is his latest book and was published by HarperBusiness (September 2016).

I highly recommend it as well as William Zinsser’s On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, 30th Anniversary Edition, published by Harper Perennial (April 2016).