Publishing Jargon and Plain English: Richard Charkin's Case Against Trade-Speak

What did Richard Charkin argue?

That the publishing business, which sells language for a living, too often abuses it. In a column for Publishing Perspectives on July 23, 2026, the veteran publisher picked apart words and phrases that have crept into trade announcements and corporate writing.

Who Charkin is

Charkin has spent decades at the top of British publishing. He has run Macmillan and served as executive director of Bloomsbury, was president of the Publishers Association and of the International Publishers Association, and founded the consultancy and imprint Mensch Publishing. He has written a long-running column for Publishing Perspectives, where his archive mixes industry analysis with wry commentary.

The targets

Among the usages Charkin singled out were "publishes" used as a stand-alone verb for a release date, "across" used to mean almost anything, "learnings" in place of lessons, "towards" in contexts where it adds nothing, and "extraordinary" applied so often that it no longer means anything. His guide was H. W. Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, first published in 1926 and still the reference point for careful British writers. His position was not that language should be frozen. It was that change should make English clearer and richer, not vaguer.

Why it matters beyond style

Jargon has costs. Press releases full of trade-speak get ignored by journalists. Metadata and book descriptions written in marketing language underperform with readers who search in plain words. Authors receiving contracts and royalty statements full of opaque terms are less able to understand their own deals. Clear language is a competitive advantage in a business that depends on persuading readers.

A plain-English checklist for publishing writing

1. Use the specific verb. A book "goes on sale" or "is published on" a date.
2. Replace "across" with the real relationship. "In print and audio" says more than "across formats."
3. Prefer "lessons" to "learnings." It is shorter and familiar.
4. Ration superlatives. If every title is extraordinary, none is.
5. Read it aloud. If a sentence sounds like nobody would say it, rewrite it.
6. Write for the searcher. Book descriptions should use the words readers actually type.

For authors

Self-published authors write their own descriptions, author bios and newsletters, so the same discipline applies. A clear, concrete description often outperforms one stuffed with genre buzzwords. Charkin's column is a good prompt for authors to reread a sales page with fresh eyes.