There are a lot of words in the English language, somewhere between 150,00 and 200,000, depending on how you count it. Despite taking a greater interest than many in words, there are still thousands of words for which I do not know the meaning.
However, one that I do know, and I'm sure you do as well, is 'restructure'. It means, as far as I'm aware, to change the structure, to rearrange the component parts thus altering the shape or form. What is does not mean is to reduce. And yet, I have just read a press release which states that a company will "restructure its workforce by 10%."
You can see what's happened here. They're making some people redundant but don't want to say so outright and have decided that 'restructure' is less negative than 'reduce'. Well, it is, but what they've ended up with is a sentence that makes no sense whatsoever.
How on earth can anything be restructured by a percentage? It's either restructured or it isn't. Do they honestly believe that the reader will not realise that they mean reduced? If they do think that, they're treating the reader like idiots. And if they don't believe that, then they're idiots themselves.
The Plain English Campaign has been running since 1979. Let's keep it going eh?
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