Slap me if you ever hear me uttering the phrase “thinking outside the box.”
I’m adding it to David Meerman Scott’s list of most offensive and overly used words and phrases in press releases. (I interviewed David several months ago on “The New Rules of Press Releases: How to Write Them to Attracty Buyers, Not only Journalists.”)
His list of gobbledygook includes:
- “next generation”
- “flexible”
- “robust”
- “world class”
- “scalable”
- “easy to use”
- “cutting edge”
- “mission critical”
- “market leading”
- “industry standard”
- “turnkey”
- “groundbreaking”
- “interoperable”
- “best of breed”
David suggests that before you write, identify your various target audiences.
“What are their problems? Business issues? Needs? Only then are you ready to communicate your expertise to the market. Here’s the rule: when you write, start with your buyers, not with your product.”
Many of the words and phrases above show up repeatedly in a company’s boring and pompous boilerplate. If you’re among the guilty, start editing.
Ha! How in the world could I have forgotten “thinking outside the box”? Thanks for adding that one, Joan. This project has been so much fun. You and I have known that these phrases are overused. But seeing the actual stats is amazing.
Now maybe I should do a version of teenagerisms. Like, I have a thirteen year old, and, yeah, she has her own, like, vocabiulary too, you know? Which is most anoying teenagerisms or corporateisms?
Take care,
David
Corporate-speak is definitely more annoying.
The kids are just being kids. Most of the corporate types who butcher the language have college degrees and shouuld know better.
Hey, speaking of college degrees, how about doing a survey on some of the writing that comes out of academia? In my work coaching writers, the most difficult people to teach are the Ph.D.s.
Great post, Joan. I just posted on my blog about jargon in public speaking. Overused, ambiguous or confusing terms have no place when you’re trying to communicate clearly!
I agree wholeheartedly, but what do you do about clients who insist on adding those meaningless buzzwords to the news releases — or worse, marketing materials — you write? They think it makes them sound important and can’t be convinced otherwise. I’ve even directed some to buzzwhack.com, to no avail. I just cringe when forced to send out a release with my name on it that contains silly corporate-speak.
I agree with Ms. Chapman. Public Relations pro’s may compose the first draft of a news release, but THEN it goes through approvals, and often, in my experience at least, that’s where the higher-ups start inserting corporate-speak, cliches, and hackneyed buzzwords.
I just did a google test of the gobbledygook words and it seems currently that Australia has much higher use of these words than even here in America.
Unexpectedly I also noticed how these same words have infected non-English speakers.
Can’t be quite sure if they’re using them in the same context but boy reminds of a great James Brown song about a “whole lot of people talkin’ but ain’t sayin nothin”.