Retire "go"

Listened in on an adolescent conversation lately? "So I go, 'Are you nuts?' And he goes, 'No, I'm not.' And then I go, 'You totally are.' And then he, like, storms out."

It grates on the ears, but it's teenspeak and they're entitled to it. However, teenspeak is unattractive in a corporate office, and unfortunately too many people inhabiting those offices today still speak as if they're on their way to home room instead of to a business meeting.

When my kids were young, they could speak any way they wanted with their friends, but inside our home, "go" as a substitute for "said" was banished. They hated it, but now that they're grown people, they sound like adults, not as if they have a case of arrested development. I think I did something right. Try it. Your children won't thank you now, but they might in ten years.

For the mothers among us

OK. I can't take it anymore, by which I mean use of the term "mother load" or, even worse, "motherload." Let's get it right. A lode is a vein of metal ore, such as gold or silver. A mother lode is a great big vein of such an ore, a vein that might feed other, smaller lodes. When they'd had a huge strike, the California gold rush miners--the'49ers--often said they'd "hit the mother lode."

People who don't know the difference, however, write about the mother load.

Folks, the only mother load I know about is a fetus. And if you hit that mother load, that mother is going to call a cop. Consider this your first warning.

Beware the almost-right word

When I can't sleep, I sometimes check out the long-form commercials we dress up with the term "infomercial." Of course, advertisers who invest in these expensive commercials try to put their products in the best possible light, and that's fine. But sometimes the people they hire to write the ads decide that the correct word for the context just isn't showy enough. They want a substitute. Something fancier or more sophisticated. That's okay, but it's best if the copywriter knows that words that are similar don't necessarily mean the same thing. Choosing the wrong word can make an ad sound stupid rather than upscale.

The best example I've seen lately comes from a product I can't even remember because I was laughing so hard at the substitute word the copywriter thought was more elegant than the correct one. The commercial said,"If you are missing the restive sleep you need, we can help."

Unfortunately, by substituting the word restive for the correct word--restful--the copywriter really screwed up and undercut the client's message. Restful, of course, means tranquil, giving rest, or a feeling of rest.

Restive, which the copywriter would have discovered had he or she bothered to look it up, means restless, impatient, or difficult to control. So if you're not awake enough already, go ahead and try the product. It's guaranteed to keep you up all night, tossing and turning and feeling out of whack.

Somehow I don't think that's what the advertiser had in mind when he hired an ad agency to tout his sleeping aid. Because the copywriter was too lazy to do the job, the client poured money down a rathole. Too bad.

This is rich

I recently wrote an article for ezinearticles.com. It talks about specific buzzwords to avoid on your Web site. One of them is enterprise, when used as a substitute for business, company, corporation, or multinational conglomerate. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with enterprise. It's just sort of a look-at-me-I'm-a-fancy-word substitute for any number of sturdy, serviceable synonyms. It's overused and then some.

The second word I castigated is integrated. Most of the "solutions" out there are not only "effective," but they're also integrated. I hope so, because any so-called solution that doesn't work with what I already have isn't worth much to me. As I mentioned in my article, integrated should go without saying. In most cases, unfortunately, it doesn't.

Flanking the ezine article that gives 20 lashes to enterprise and integrate are several ads, and the title of one that directs the reader to a company called SAS is "Enterprise Integration." How appropriate. When I looked up SAS (pronounced "sass"), I learned that, "Since 1976, SAS has delivered proven solutions to access relevant, reliable, consistent information throughout your enterprise, giving you the ability to make the right decisions and achieve sustainable performance improvement." Wow! I've never seen a clearer example of a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Now, I'm not picking on SAS, because the rest of its Web site is relatively clear. By going deeper, I can find out about its products and services and even about the benefits it provides for its "family." But this positioning statement tells me nothing. I don't know what solutions it delivers. And delivers is a buzzword in its own right. No one makes or creates or supplies anymore. Everyone delivers. I don't know what kinds of decisions the company helps me make.

And sustainable? Oh, save me. It means long-lasting or easily maintained. It's also on my buzzword alert list because absolutely everything today is, or must be seen to be, sustainable.

As I look at this kind of senseless non-communication, I'm staggered by the amount of time and the number of words it takes to say nothing. My hope is that as American business begins to reconstitute itself in an improving economy (and it will improve), it will also realize that clear communication is the key to sales and an important aid to productivity.

Top Buzzwords and Why to Avoid Them, Part II

Let's move on to some more toxic buzzwords. Today's selection is drive.

My goodness, business drives a great deal today. In 15 minutes of Web browsing in only one industry, I learned that Allstate drives sustained shareholder value, Nationwide drives down the cost of healthcare, and Farmers drives innovation. In another quarter-hour of looking at advertising sites, I found that McCann Worldgroup drives demand, while Interpublic Group's diversity "ignites the creativity that drives results." And Wilen Group is driven by its innovative Founder (their capitalization, not mine).

It seems that drive has become a true buzzword, and as buzz waxes, meaning wanes. With just a little thought, we can come up with substitutions that work and aren't burdened by the self-consciousness of corporate gobbledygook. We can strive to build shareholder value, reduce the cost of healthcare, or foster innovation. We can increase demand, give clients the results they want, and be inspired by an innovative founder. Eliminating what I call flabspeak will bring about greater understanding. And isn't that the point of communicating?

Top Buzzwords and Why to Avoid Them, Part I

I'm not against jargon. If you're writing for a company magazine or speaking to a group of like-minded folks who know your industry, jargon is a useful tool. So this post isn't about that. This post, and several to follow, will deal with specific buzzwords--business words that are overused and rarely examined for meaning.

Those who have followed these posts know that my least favorite buzzword is solution, especially when, God help us, it's used as a verb, e.g., "We'll solution marketing's ideas this afternoon." What's the point of a solution if a problem hasn't been articulated? And if you look closely at Web sites, you'll see that solution is often simply a substitute for program, product, or service--all perfectly lovely words that tell the customer something about what the company does.

Right up there with solution is the word leverage. It's almost as overused and just as nonsensical. Leverage, in the context we hear it today, comes to us from the world of finance. Investorwords.com defines it as "the degree to which one is using borrowed money." It became a very popular term during the Go-Go '80s. Everyone was buying companies with OPM (other people's money), using the assets of one company to purchase another, and dancing in the streets. Greed was good. Well, look where that got us. But I digress.

Today, business literature and Web sites leverage everything, e.g., "We leverage our core competencies, business synergies, and human capital to bring you best-of-breed service." I'll bet if you asked the perpetrator of that sentence what he or she meant by leverage, you'd be greeted by a great big silence.

As far as I can tease out from the Web sites where this word appears on page after page, companies are trying to tell you that they have a lot of different kinds of skills and they'll take full advantage of them to give you great service. Leverage has nothing to do it. It's just a buzzword that's run amok.

As I said in Talking Your Way to the Top: Business English That Works, buzzwords are not just meaningless; they can be dangerous. I believe most people use them because they think it makes them sound like the big guys. They become too lazy to dig out a thesaurus and look for an apt synonym for the phrase du jour.

But in the worst case, buzzwords can be employed to shade the truth, to make the picture look rosier than it is. By saying nothing and using a lot of words to do it, companies can sometimes hide the facts. Today, that's shortsighted. Customers are looking for the greatest possible clarity before they plunk down their hard-earned dough. They're fed up with lack of meaning. Show them you care by giving them what they want: direct, simple communication. It will pay off.