Some things annoy you irrationally in professional life. I wish I had a pound for the number of times I have seen the phrase "wide range of..." in the context of marketing material or pitches by law and consultancy firms.
I saw it again in a presentation a week or so ago - "So and So has a wide range of experience of XXX contracts". I just picked a London law firm at random while composing this and did a search for "wide range" - and came up with 204 results.
But what does it actually mean? I searched the Oxford Dictionary which informed me that "No exact match found for “wide range” in British & World English". Well that's impressive for a law firm to be using such an undefined phrase in their marketing material! I think where this is going is that precise use of words is important and not just in contracts. Explaining what a firm or an individual does to a potential client is possibly the difference to being instructed or not.
So I advocate being much clearer. In my own case instead of saying "Clive has a wide range of experience of IT contracting" I should say, by way of example, "Clive has experience of outsourcing, software, cloud and distribution contracts".
Anyway I hope others will listen and stop using the phrase "wide range" or at least use it a bit more selectively.
I saw it again in a presentation a week or so ago - "So and So has a wide range of experience of XXX contracts". I just picked a London law firm at random while composing this and did a search for "wide range" - and came up with 204 results.
But what does it actually mean? I searched the Oxford Dictionary which informed me that "No exact match found for “wide range” in British & World English". Well that's impressive for a law firm to be using such an undefined phrase in their marketing material! I think where this is going is that precise use of words is important and not just in contracts. Explaining what a firm or an individual does to a potential client is possibly the difference to being instructed or not.
So I advocate being much clearer. In my own case instead of saying "Clive has a wide range of experience of IT contracting" I should say, by way of example, "Clive has experience of outsourcing, software, cloud and distribution contracts".
Anyway I hope others will listen and stop using the phrase "wide range" or at least use it a bit more selectively.
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