Clarity in communication

Today in a meeting at work, one participant asked another to 'treat him like a 4 year old' when giving instructions so that there would be no miscommunication.
It reminded me of an experience I had back in early 2001, while working for a stock-trading software company. We were preparing our software for the change from price quotes coming in fractions of a whole dollar to decimal prices. At the time, stocks were quoted in fractions as small as 1/16th. So for example, on February 16th 2001 the stock for Intel closed at 33 & 3/8. This change required significant changes in our software, and required us to convert the historical data from fractions to decimal. (So that Intel will now show as closing at 33.375 on 2/16/01)

Our company created a tool to do this conversion on the historical data, but in testing, we found that in some cases it destroyed the file for an individual stock. We had a meeting with a group of engineers & managers to discuss the issue, and in the meeting the company president (who was the primary author of the tool) asked what the issue was. My response was an ill considered statement: "It nukes random historical files."

The president almost came out of his seat as he leaned forward, pounded his fists on the table & asked "Ted, what in the hell does 'nuke' mean? What exactly is the symptom of a 'nuked' file? Translate that into something useful to me!"

I don't know how I managed to not throw up, but I managed to evenly and immediately reply "It reduces the file size of the affected files to exactly 26 bytes with the same pattern of unrecognizable data within the file."

The president leaned back in his chair, looking me over for a minute, then he pronounced to the rest of the assembled group of engineers & managers "Now THATS what I needed. Now we all know that to 'nuke' a file means to reduce the file size to 26 bytes of unrecognizable data!"

Now in engineering meetings I try to be a little more eloquent and less flippant with my remarks, especially if high ranking persons are present.