International Written Communication: Slang

"All right, the next thing we need to talk about--we're talking about the words that we're going to choose for our correspondence. There are three things that you actually need to do or not do. The first one is avoid slang. And when I'm talking about slang, I'm talking about those catchphrases that are indicative of every culture that traditionally means something that they're really not. For example, if I say what's up, dog. Well, am I really calling you a dog? Because you're not a dog, you're a human. Things like that could be extremely confusing for someone from another culture. So, that's really tough, and when you're writing letters remember that you have to think in terms of the letter, not in the way in which you speak. So slangs are fine in speaking, but keep them out of letter writing. Something else that you want to stay away from are idioms. And what are idioms? Well, basically the same thing. They are statements--I like to refer to them as folk sayings, or folk wisdom. Let me give you an example. If I said, hey, what's cooking? Well, you would know, here in America, that I was asking you what's up? What are you doing? Well, to another culture that could mean something totally different. I know that's a perfect example that I've gotten in trouble with before, is saying what's cooking to someone in Ireland, and his response to me was I believe it's Shepherd's Pie. Well, I didn't really want to know what was cooking, I wanted to know what was going on. And that's idioms. So you want to stay away from that. If you will not do those things, than what will happen is your writing will be clear. And that is what you want. You need to keep it simple, plain, clear English."