Characteristics of Bureaucratic Style

As the previous activity revealed, bureaucratic style is characterized by three main weaknesses:

• Lack of conciseness
• Unnecessary modifiers and qualifiers
• General wordiness
• Pointless repetition and redundancy
• Weak, inactive verbs
• Actions buried in abstract nouns
• Excessive passive voice
• Inappropriate or inconsistent tone
• Impersonal, indirect, or overly formal
• Excessive use of jargon, technical terms
• Other set terms or phrases (buzzwords)

You’ll consider different ways to make your writing concise and active later in this section. Ensuring an appropriate and consistent tone in your correspondence is the topic of a later section in the module.