Partly, it was the cliché-in-the-making “zeitgeisty” that got my attention.
Partly, it was a series of provocations from Twitter spirit @sheigh, who shares my fear of buzzwords and has been known to scare me with tweets such as this: “Leverage hyperlocal onboarding tactics to capture the low hanging fruit…”
Either way, we at Ragan Communications have decided that Halloween week is an ideal time to terrify ourselves with tales of jargon and corporate-speak that strangle organizational speech and writing.
Although Forbes’ jargon madness season has passed and end-of-the-year roundups are still two months off, it’s never a bad time to list our most dreaded buzzwords.
In that jugular vein, my Ragan colleagues and others helped me scare up a crypt load of terrifying terms and frightful phrases that might your cause friends, family and editors to gnash their teeth in dismay:
‘Zeitgeisty’
This word came to my attention via Walter Kirn, author of “Up in the Air.”
Worst adjective ever: Zeitgeisty. Just saw it on the jacket of a literary novel and couldn’t bear to open the book because of it.
— walter kirn (@walterkirn) October 5, 2015
Alarmingly, several online dictionaries allow this word, at least as slang. Kirn’s call-out prompted one Twitter user to reply, “I’m sure it was empowering & facilitative, too.”
'Hack’
A word to the wise: If you have ambitions to write for Kristin Piombino, associate editor of Ragan.com, lose the word “hack,” as in “10 simple life hacks.” @Sheigh also offers “growth hacker” and “headline hack.”
Download this free white paper to discover 10 ways to improve your writing today.
'Game changer’
PR Daily co-editor Beki Winchel warns, “I cannot stand any version of 'game changer.’ 'Gamification’ isn’t much better.” She’s not alone.
@ByWorking Just me or is there a revived overuse of “game changer”
— sheigh (@sheigh) September 2, 2015
Mystical titles
Several colleagues offered suggestions from the mystic job description subset of verbal nuisances. “People also should stop using 'guru’ and 'ninja’ to describe themselves and/or their job positions,” Winchel warns.
Likewise, unless you are Jimmy Swaggart, don’t describe yourself as an “evangelist” around Susan Young, editor of Ragan’s Health Care Communication News. She sums up her reaction: “Grrrr…”
'Shiny (new) objects’
This buzz phrase—which describes glittery distractions, such as a new social intranet that nobody uses except to post cat photos—may soon replace the beloved “low-hanging fruit” in popularity.
'Circle back’
Kristin Farmer, Ragan’s director of sales and strategic partnerships, has been hearing this one far too often lately. And while you’re at it, she begs everyone to table “value add,” “vertical” and “table it.”
'Rewire our brains’
Courtesy of @sheigh, this brings to mind Dr. Frankenstein tinkering with the brains of his poor monster. Really, since when has monitoring multiple screens and devices caused an evolution in the neurology of any creature?
'Synergy’
Don’t try to “synergize” with John Cowan, managing editor of Motivational Manager and other Ragan publications. He hates this word, and he’s similarly leery of “engagement.”
“I believe there’s such a thing as engagement, I just don’t think it can be measured: '37 percent of the workforce is engaged,’” he writes.
Agree or disagree, you have to admit that only a cliché-monger would use that word. (Oh. Never mind, then.)
Micro-anything
Bill Sweetland, a Ragan editor and linguistic purist, responds with terror to the specter of “micro-aggression,” which “sticks in my craw like a paring knife turned sideways.”
His dark tale—which itself would be considered a micro-aggression in some quarters—prompted Winchel to relate the word that haunts her night and day: “micro-moments.” Executive Editor Rob Reinalda helpfully defines this as “the metric equivalent of a trice. There are six trices in a jiffy, by the way.”
'Media’
Reinalda, also known as The Word Czar, reminds quaking staffers of his “intolerance for 'media’ as a catch-all term.” Here is Reinalda’s entry in our in-house style guide:
“Journalists are not media,” he writes. “Media placements/promotions are not media. Media is the plural of medium, a channel of communication. Media should, in most cases, take a plural verb form. The exception is social media, which is a monolithic entity unto itself; that term takes singular verb forms.”
More cow pies!
That’s not all. In his email, Reinalda adds, “'Taking __________ to the next level’ is another cow pie, as are 'thought leader’ and 'influencer.’ They make me want to hurl my guts into a 'sales funnel.’”
Reinalda and Sweetland ghoulishly teamed up to offer a Halloween treat bag full of alternatives to “thought leader”:
- Thought manager
- Thought caretaker
- Thought helper
- Thought stager
- Thought carpenter
- Thought toreador
- Thought balloon-animal twister
- Thought cellist
- Thought coxswain
- Thought aviatrix
- Thought thinker
Finally, while exploring dungeons in any houses of horrors you may find yourself in, avoid getting caught in “thought straps"—as in: "Let’s put on our 'thought straps’ and come up with some possible solutions,” Piombino writes.
After a chilling exchange of buzzwords here at Ragan Communications, Young warned, “I am guessing we all may have nightmares tonight.”
I’m leaving the lights on, just in case.
@ByWorkingfrom Ragan.com http://ift.tt/1RBA2M4 via video company
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1NATibT
No comments:
Post a Comment