Sifting through the ‘waffle’ in party manifestos

Now business-writing specialists have warned parties to radically overhaul their writing styles before publishing future election manifestos – or risk failing to connect with voters.

Brighton-based Emphasis carried out a detailed analysis of the 2015 UK General Election manifestos published by the seven main parties – and said there was “far too much waffle”. The business-writing training company also said mistakes in the text of the manifestos set a poor example.

Emphasis analysed the manifestos of each of the seven parties that took part in the televised leaders’ debate on April 2 – the Conservatives, the Greens, Labour, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, the Scottish National Party and Ukip.

They put 1,000 words from the beginning of each manifesto’s education policy under the microscope and produced graphs to compare them on style, technical accuracy, grammar, punctuation and complexity.

The study found that every party fell down in certain areas.

Ukip struggled the most on sentence structure while Labour fared worst on grammar and punctuation. The Green Party used the passive voice more than any other party. The Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats did better than the other parties overall.

Emphasis chief executive Rob Ashton, inset below, said: “There was far too much waffle and, in some cases, the parties failed to spot unfortunate spelling and grammatical errors – or issues with sentence structure – before publication.

“This is not the way to connect with the electorate, especially at a time when so few people are engaging with politics.

“Politicians should lead by example if they want voters to take them seriously.”

All the parties used short words, of around five letters on average, but they often used more words than they needed.

The study found marked differences between the styles used by the three parties which have dominated Westminster in recent years – the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems – and the four other main parties.

Mr Ashton said: “Ukip, the Greens and Plaid Cymru have all tended to use long sentences, each containing a multitude of ideas. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have done the opposite, favouring shorter, simpler sentences, with the Tories taking the middle ground.”

He said the Green Party, Plaid Cymru and SNP manifestos used more superfluous words than the other parties.

Labour, the Tories, the SNP and Plaid Cymru used more people-centred language.

Mr Ashton added: “The biggest surprise was in the Tory document, which is the only one that addresses the reader directly.

“This is the grammatical equivalent of the method used by Ed Miliband in the first TV debate, when he looked straight into the camera to speak to the audience viewing at home.”

The company, set up in 1998, uses the same kind of analysis for delegates on its courses.

Mr Ashton added: “The result is dense documents that policy wonks may love but that may fail to connect with voters.”

For more analysis, visit writing-skills.com/ election2015.

Conservatives

Politicos will be used to the well-worn phrase “long-term economic plan”.

But the Conservatives exhibited the fewest overall weaknesses in the 1,000-word sample with just 33.

Emphasis suggests this is perhaps not surprising given their long-standing track record in politics.

The Tories address the reader in the second person – i.e. “you” in grammar terms, rather than the first-person plural “we” or third-person “they”.

The company suggests this may have been adopted after Ed Miliband’s use of it on TV, drawing on reports that the Tories had not finished writing their manifesto until quite late on.

The Conservatives had just one punctuation error in the sample when they said: “We know what works in education: great teachers; brilliant leadership; rigour in the curriculum; discipline in the classroom; proper exams.”

The semicolons are too heavy where commas would suffice.

Labour

Labour often lapsed into party speak.

Its manifesto refers to “Government”, rather than “the Government”, for example. It also talks about “early-years intervention”, the kind of language used by think tanks and policy specialists but unlikely to connect with voters.

But it does use people-centred language.

The word “people”, for instance, appears in the second sentence of the chapter analysed.

Labour fared worst on grammar and punctuation – the experts spotted 11 errors in the sample.

A sub-heading from the Labour manifesto read: “A high quality education for our children.”

The party’s writers used commas incorrectly and failed to include hyphens in some compound adjectives, such as between “high” and “quality” in this example – “ironic given the subject matter”, Emphasis said.

Labour was ahead of its socialist counterpart the SNP, which had nine grammar and punctuation errors.

Labour had 45 overall weaknesses in 1,000 words.

Ukip

Ukip struggle the most on sentence structure, with 14 sentences highlighted as being too complicated.

The party’s sentences often contain a multitude of ideas. In many cases, these begin with lengthy explanations before stating what they are actually trying to say.

One complicated Ukip sentence read: “It is morally wrong that five independent fee-paying schools should send more students to Oxbridge than the worst performing two thousand secondary schools combined and that more students from the state sector attended Oxbridge in the 1960s than do so now.”

A strong point is lost because of a sentence that is simply too long, Emphasis said, adding that splitting it into two sentences would have worked better.

This might be due to not having the strict editing process of the governing parties.

Both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems appeared more disciplined with sentences pared down for maximum impact.

Ukip had 55 overall weaknesses in 1,000 words.

Green Party

The Green Party gravitates towards a more passive, sometimes quite anonymous style.

In its sentences, it often leaves out who or what will take action with phrases such as “...local authorities would be given freedom as to how to”. This use of what grammarians call the passive voice is the natural style of academics and policy specialists.

An example is: “Ensuring that all schools that serve particular vulnerable communities, for example the Jewish, Muslim or Sikh communities, are adequately protected from sectarian attacks.”

Emphasis said this pledge loses its weight because of the passive voice and that the party would sound more confident using the active voice, “We would protect…”

The Greens used the passive voice 18 times – more than any other party. The Greens also, according to Emphasis, use more unnecessary words that could be removed altogether.

The Greens performed the worst according to Emphasis in terms of overall weaknesses in the 1,000-word sample, with 60 results.

Liberal Democrats

Neck-and-neck with the Conservatives, the Lib Dems displayed 13 uses of passive writing in their manifesto sample.

A passive sentence might be something like “The NHS will be protected”, whereas the active voice would say “We will protect the NHS”.

Emphasis also highlighted indirect language by the Lib Dems, such as “There is much to be proud of in our schools today, and much that has been improved in the last few years”.

It said the Lib Dems missed an opportunity to praise teachers and other education professionals for their contributions.

The party, which notched up a score of ten for use of indirect language, often failed to put the “who” into their manifesto.

The Lib Dems were the best for their use of short words (of about only five letters on average) with only five examples of complex sentences in their sample.

The party were second best for overall weaknesses behind the Tories with 35 in 1,000 words.