New software program helps businesses 'cut the bull'

A new software program sends a clear message to corporate America - cut out the bull.

New York-based Deloitte Consulting admits it helped foster confusing, indecipherable words like synergy, paradigm, and extensible repository, but now it has decided enough is enough.

Today it releases Bullfighter, as the software is called, to help writers of business documents avoid jargon and use clear language.

Bullfighter could help investors spot troubled companies. Used to test language employed by now-bankrupt energy trader Enron from 1999 through 2001, Deloitte Consulting partner Brian Fugere said the programme found "it got progressively more obscure as they got deeper and deeper into trouble".

The programme can be downloaded free at Bullfighter.