...They all have their own traditional language. Complicated contracts, evasive and woolly statements, illegible prescriptions, religious books only written in Latin, and bullet point-filled PowerPoint presentations full of jargon and buzzwords. These languages were formed by tradition, and some may argue are here to protect a profession (who needs a lawyer when you can seal agreements with a simple paragraph?).
And yes, I put business presentations in the same category. Change is already happening. Formal letters are replaced by short, informal emails. The woolly Microsoft Word long hand memo was replaced by PowerPoint bullets. And for very important presentations (1% of the total?), businesses start investing in visual, custom designed, presentations (the work I do under the Idea Transplant name)
But change can go further. The other 99% of business presentations can be different as well. These documents do not have to be graphically stunning, loaded with the latest animation and zooming effects, or full of exciting video clips. They need to look good, and they need to have a clear, crisp, direct, visual language.
It requires a change in the corporate language that corporate executives are using. And making that change is hard. Requiring a new complicated piece of software for it would kill the change before it even starts. The idea behind my presentation design app SlideMagic is to stop comparing business language to that used by lawyers, politicians, doctors, and priests...
Art: Benjamin Ferrers, The Court of Chancery during the reign of George I, circa 1725