Lullaby Language

I stumbled on the article, Lullaby Language by Jerry Weinberg. Here is an extract of the keywords that confuse teams involved in projects working together and the better ways of dealing with the situation.

Should

The meaning of “should” would be “probably won’t.”

For instance, the sentence, “The Catalog Department should deliver component pricing data by 1 February to the IT Department.”

Team-A interprets this as “The Catalog Department [must] deliver component pricing data by 1 February to the IT Department.”

Team-B interprets this as “The Catalog Department [will make every effort to] deliver component pricing data by 1 February to the IT Department.”

The meaning with using should is now, “The Catalog Department [probably won’t] deliver component pricing data by 1 February to the IT Department.”

Just

Between the sentences;

“Next time we’ll just let you know what we really need.”

and

“Next time we’ll let you know what we really need.”

that just makes it sound like there won’t be any problems. It discounts the difficulty.

These are “Lullaby Word.” Like ‘should,’ it lulls your mind into a false sense of security. A better translation of ‘just’ would have been, ‘have a lot of trouble to.’”

Alexander Pugh put it nicely on a Hacker News comment;

For instance, “Let’s just add an API.” I think the approach to an API as “just” a feature of your product will be about as successful as saying, “Let’s just add a UI.” To implement a successful UI, one needs to be thoughtful and thorough and bring in people who specialize in it. Why should any other interface for your product be any different? It’s not that it’s a bad or good idea, but rather one that shouldn’t “just” be done.

Soon

Another lullaby is “soon” which translates to a vague timeline and no definitives. When someone ask you when, and the answer is “Soon”, it means , “I don’t know, but don’t keep bothering me.”

Very

Adding ‘very’ is like adding a sleeping pill to the lullaby. It makes it even more certain that it’s going to be a long, long time. Maybe never.

Only

“It’s only a one line change.” makes it sound like — “That is, I didn’t think much about what could go wrong.”

Anything

“I didn’t change anything.” translates to, “That is, anything I thought was important.”

All

All I gotta do is … [A synonym for “just.”]

Lullaby words are designed to discourage feedback by putting both the speaker’s and the listener’s minds to sleep. And no feedback means that the meaning of the statement containing a lullaby word cannot be clarified. And, if it’s not clarified, it can mean almost anything – and that’s always the beginning of trouble. If you want to avoid such trouble, start converting those lullaby words to alarm words – waking you up to potential misunderstanding rather than lulling you to sleep.