Blog

Pieces on language, bureaucracy and the strange world of official letters.

• October 2026

  They can brush you off on the phone. A letter stays.

  Some people cannot sound as firm on the phone as they actually feel. In writing, something changes: nobody can interrupt them, and their words do not disappear when the conversation ends.

• October 2026

  Why use Amtwort if ChatGPT can write letters?

  ChatGPT can write surprisingly good letters. So why pay for Amtwort? The more interesting question is where the real problem actually begins.

• October 2026

  Why official German drives even native speakers to despair

  Franz Joseph is only partly to blame this time. Austrian administrative language has an astonishingly long memory.

• October 2026

  The biggest problem is noun addiction

  For centuries, administrations have tried to write more clearly. And for centuries, they have reliably turned verbs back into nouns.

• October 2026

  The human being does not fit in the field

  Forms save administrations time. In return, a person’s life sometimes has to learn how to fit into a box.