Obfuscating language

Four more irritating expressions:

"Going forward" (as in, "The franchise expects higher attendance going forward")
"At the end of the day" (unless something really did take place at the end of the day)
"Best practices" (one of the worst bizspeak phrases I know of and all too often used to describe cost-cutting strategies -- but OK in a sports context if we're writing, "The Bulldogs had one of their best practices")
"Rightsizing" (awful euphemism for downsizing, which is bad enough)

 

"As we first told you on Eyewitnessactionnewschannel..."

 

Hey, if you're going to start talking about the business world, there isn't enough room on the Internet for that list.

 

ESPN is the all-time king of this, no?

 

I love this. I work in the business world now and one of the words that drives me most nuts -- and is used most often -- is "utilize." It means "use." I change that every time. I recently told one of the biz-types I work with if they ever see the word "utilize" in one of my publications, it's a proofing mistake, because if I see it, it will be gone.

We once ran a story in which an industry expert said of some of her clients, "They’re not really sure they want to do this kind of stuff.” When I sent the edited version to the writer for approval, she wrote back, "Is there anyway to rewrite this sentence so it doesn’t say 'stuff'? ... It just sounds so dumb."

My response was, "It doesn't sound dumb at all. It sounds like the way people actually talk."

I'm happy to say the final version ran complete with the word "stuff."

 

"Leverage" as a verb
"Solution," meaning a product or service

 

I love the word 'stuff.'

It gets axed all the time.

 

My next sentence after the ones in the previous post was, "Full disclosure: Stuff is one of my favorite words of all time."

 

I'm guilty of using a lot of lingo and biz-speak or marketing-speak for in-house communications.
I admit it.

But I try to hunt those things down and kill them when it comes to external communications.

Sadly, I don't always have the final say on it, though.

 

One of the beauties of my job is I'm in charge of most of our external communication, including our monthly magazines, so I do get the final say (with a few exceptions).

One thing I've noticed, thankfully, is that "paradigm" no longer seems to be one of the hot business buzzwords.

 

"Stakeholders."

 

I worked a brief stint where I thought I had final say, but discovered that was not the way it was going to work.
I left there.

Now I'm in a position where I knew coming in that I didn't have final say.
Much easier to deal with the situation when all the cards were put on the table during the hiring process.