Business C1 · Unit 9 · Talent, culture & difficult conversations
9B. The unsaid, the implied
C1 · Advanced Business English · ellipsis & substitution
Unit 9 · Epigraph
"The sentence you cannot deliver in three words on Monday is the sentence you will spell out in fifty on Tuesday, and the room will hear neither."
Objectives
What you'll be able to do
- Compress the opening of a difficult conversation into the elliptical register the counterparty can, under load, actually hear.
- Use verbal, nominal and clausal ellipsis (has / does / one / so / not) and the pro-form substitution to answer without opening ground the room has not agreed to enter.
- Distinguish the compassion fragment from the memorised template — and know which the receiver reads as human.
- Design a prep-sheet paragraph whose ratio of full to elliptical sentences predicts, in advance, whether the message will land.
Important notes
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