Via Shawn Paul Wood.
1. At the End of the Day. Let’s just wait until the sun goes down, and maybe Dracula or the Werewolf can kill the next person who says this doltish idiom.
2. Innovate. Since we are so big on this word, how about we please innovate another word that means “my client makes really cool stuff.”
3. Drill Down. Do you work in the petrochemical field? Fancy fracking much? What about a carpentry? Unless you plan to use said power tool, let go of this phrase.
4. Solution. This word is actually important when used correctly, because it’s fairly accurate and descriptive. Unfortunately, it doesn’t solve the need to consultant a thesaurus.
5. Stakeholder. At first, this mysterious person had a stake in the plan. Then, it was a share or a stake, because who knows?! Now, it’s like a bottlenecker driving next to a wreck.
6. Leader. We get it. Journalists get it too. You can’t say your client is “the best” because that sounds too haughty, so masking it as near the front of the pack will help. Only, it never does.
7. Take It Offline. You do realize you we were never online, right? Unless you’re having a chat via IM or Skype, just unplug it.
8. Low-Hanging Fruit. For the love of God, can we simply break this twig so that fruit can roll on down the hill and stop hanging. Set it free already.
9. Open the Kimono. Evidently, there is a rather large and spunky nudist colony in Kyoto because a few PR firms have been fascinated with someone’s private parts. Can we put a full-length trenchcoat on, please?
The 9 Worst Cliches in PR
If JFK Had Been a CEO Instead of a President, Here’s How His Moon Speech Would Have Sounded
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued an immediately famous call to “put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade.”
As Chip and Dan Heath point out, had Kennedy been a CEO, his words would have become insufferably stilted and drained of their vitality. He would have said something like, “Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry through maximum team-centered innovation and strategically targeted aerospace initiatives.”
Here’s Hoping David Pogue’s Allergy to Jargon Is Contagious
Don’t Say
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Instead, Say
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price point
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price
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form factor
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size
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solution
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product
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DRM
| copy protection |
functionality
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feature
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Amen!
Why Is Academic Writing So Bad?
Stephen Walt:
“Many academics (and especially younger ones) tend to confuse incomprehensibility with profundity. If they write long and ponderous sentences and throw in lots of jargon, they assume that readers will be dazzled by their erudition and more likely to accept whatever it is they are saying uncritically. Moreover, jargon is a way for professional academics to remind ordinary people that they are part of a guild with specialized knowledge that outsiders lack, and younger scholars often fear that if they don’t sound like a professional scholar, then readers won’t believe what they are saying no matter how solid their arguments and evidence are.”
The Speciousness of “Strategic”
A version of this blog post appeared on No Straw Men on April 6, 2009.
I work in the field of “strategic communications.” In my past job, I worked on “strategic partnerships,” among other things. Both terms are well-established, yet both are 50% meaningless.
After all, aren’t all communications “strategic”? Do nonstrategic partnerships even exist?
The truth is, these are differences without a distinction. As any semanticist will tell you, if you can remove the adjective without changing the meaning of the noun, chuck the adjective. It’s a buzzword, “an important-sounding, usually technical word or phrase, often of little meaning, used chiefly to impress laymen.”
Think of this speciousness the next time you’re tempted to employ such jargon.
