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Archive for the ‘Annoying words’ Category
In recent posts, I’ve been ranting about all those people who rely on tired old phrases instead of writing clearly. Then what did I do? I talked about “honoring milestones.”
Worse still, I said it to drywall plasterer Steven, while we were driving to yoga class. He was whining about how his schedule was so messed up by contractors who insist they’ll need him for this fussy, time-sensitive work on a certain date then change their mind.
In preparation for yoga class, I drew from my well of compassion and I told Steven that these contractors “should honor their milestones.” You know, do what they said they were going to do when they said they would do it.
Laughing at my language
But “honoring your milestones” just made Steven laugh. He doesn’t work with people who talk like this. I do.
Because I like making people laugh, I continued with an expression I hear regularly with clients and the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). “How do these contractors sustain the engagement of their plasterer stakeholders?” Steven started to tear up. Fortunately, we had just stopped at a red light.
I translated: “How do you put up with this crap?”
The reply: “Money.”
My point is that it’s fine for me to talk about milestones and stakeholder engagement with people who speak the lingo. But no one else.
When Steven gets together with his plastering buddies, I’m sure they use words that I cannot comprehend.
Almost everyone has a dialect
Our yoga teacher has her own way of communicating too.
At the end of our class, she has us repeat: “Peace to all beings. Bliss to all beings.” I feel so serene, lying on my back, sending out these loving thoughts.
Once we’re out of her orbit, though, it’s silly.
As we drove home, cars pulling out or turning without warning, Steven chanted: “People to all beings. Bliss to all beings.”
When that didn’t drain all the negative thoughts, I reminded him that these preoccupied drivers “have milestones to honor and stakeholders to engage.” Ha ha ha.
Executive recruiter lingo
Last night at an IABC seminar on resume writing, I had to stop myself from laughing out loud at the example of an effective resume the speaker, Martin Buckland, displayed. It featured expressions like “customer excellence” that make me either laugh or gag, depending on my mood, because they can be so over-used and empty.
I challenged Martin. Of course, he responded, job seekers have to back up how they achieved “customer excellence” or whatever buzz words they use. More importantly, he noted, they have to speak the same language as the executive recruiters, their gatekeepers for the mega-jobs.
Words that work for your audience
As my yoga teacher would say, I need to be open to the messages the universe is sending me. I hear you, universe. Instead of quickly discarding expressions because I’m weary of them, I need to consider how they work for other people.
So take your pick: honor your milestones, don’t blister the sheet rock, peace to you, deliver customer excellence or whatever floats your boat. It’s all good to me if it works for you.
Simple language is always the safest because everyone understands. But often choosing words for specific individuals or groups, not for myself, is better.
In last week’s post, I wrote about the need to stop using the worn-out expression thinking outside the box and replace it with the fresh and more accurate term maxing the box.
Today I’d like to expand on that theme, adding more threadbare terms that should be buried or at least wheeled out only for brief cameos.
Some of these I blogged about on my ingénue wordpress site, but are still annoying me. Others have made me clench my teeth more recently.
To help people remember how we used to write simply, I am accompanying each expression with an old-fashioned but clear alternative.
ROI: achieved results
Short for return on investment. Why can’t you just say you achieved a return or results? Why the alphabet soup?
Boot camp: intense learning
I’m still inundated with pitches for boot camps, some run by barking fitness trainers, but mostly intense learning sessions that don’t actually involve sweat and pain, though sometimes my brain gets tired. Enough.
Low-hanging fruit: easy pickings
This metaphor was fine—the first hundred times I heard it. Now it’s a low-hanging phrase for easy-thinking people.
Moment of truth: realization
What marketers call moments of truth are simply when people realize something. Too dramatic a description for an experience that’s only one step above the mundane. Unless you’re a hill billy.
Moving forward: we will
How about using the future tense instead of preceding the latest C-suite proclamation with this pretentiously grandiose phrase? The phrase is not only over-used, but can also be inaccurate if the future involves, as it so often does, staying in the same place or moving backwards.
Palpable: feel it
Although palpable can mean intense or obvious, this word came from medical science, like when the doctor says that tumor on your leg is palpable. Creeps me out.
Granularity: detailed
I keep thinking they’re talking about healthy bread, but then they get started about detailed designs or plans or something and I’m disappointed and hungry.
What expressions would you like to kill?
The person who coined the phrase thinking outside the box deserves a linguistic medal of honor.
The next person who uses it with me will get a punch in the nose. OK, I’m small and nonviolent. A dirty look.
A dirty, disgusted look because I am so weary of hearing it. Especially from people who haven’t had an original idea in years, which is why they are so fond of overused catch phrases.
What wiki says
According to my friend Wikipedia (I know, too much time online), thinking outside the box simply means “thinking differently, unconventionally or from a new perspective. This phrase often refers to novel, creative and smart thinking.”
The term is especially loved, wiki notes, by management consultants and executive coaches.
Although many of these people are brilliant, some poseurs try to sneak in by speaking the language. You can spot them easily because they all start their presentations by talking about Starbucks or Facebook. 
Before out of the box thinking, the management consultants talked about paradigm shifts, which resulted from people thinking outside the box, only they didn’t have a catch phrase for it then.
Thinking outside the box works because it’s a simple metaphor, with a twist, eschewing the confines of inside for the freedom of outside.
Shiny and new
But can’t we do better or at least shinier and newer?
To be original, we can’t use a metaphor that relates to a box. Unless we add depth to the box, which is usually portrayed on those Power Point slides as a two-dimensional square.
Let’s turn it into a cube and give 3-D glasses to everyone at the presentation. We could probably pick them up cheap, as soon as the 3-D movie trend dies.
Think outside the cube. No, too similar. Cube the square. Square the cube. No, that’s not it.
Circular logic
Another shape, perhaps. What about a circle? But how do you go beyond the circle? Look at the auras. Too new agey for those management consultants, though maybe not for some of the executive coaches.
Or maybe we need to rise above the circle to appreciate how it connects. Spring out of the circle. Rise above the circle. Encircle the circle.
Could be something profound like the circle of life. Or we could get stuck going around in circles, the dog chasing its tail.
A spiral could take us places, but people usually refer to downwad spirals. Slinkies go down the stairs, but never up, though slinky thinking would be be quite memorable if that gravity problem could be solved.
Let’s try triangles, another popular shape. No, we see them too much in pie charts and slice-of-the-pie metaphors.
We could add another corner, but then we’re back to the box.
Beyond space and time
Or maybe we should leave space and hop over to the other dimension, time.
Think beyond the moment. No. I’m trying to do less of that. Besides, you can’t see time so it doesn’t inspire metaphors.
Perhaps what we need to change is the verb. Those folks who had so much success with The Secret talked about visualizing, which combines imagining with seeing.
Visualize a new box? Too close.
Hmmm….
Accelerate the thought particles. Too scary.
Spark some new synapses. Too sciencey.
Kidnap the status quo. No, the management consultants would ponder the ROR, or return on ransom.
Think Outside the Box 2.0. Too last year.
Locked in our consciousness box
Maybe the problem is not with the phrase, tired as it is, but with the difficulty of actually thinking outside the box. People like to say they do, but how many really succeed?
The truth is we are all stuck in the box of our own consciousness. That’s why we can’t know for certain whether there’s an after life or black holes. It’s all faith or theory.
If we want to take a fresh look, we have to forget about the impossible, thinking outside the box, and embrace the possible by enlarging the box. No, I can’t take credit for that term. I came across it this morning in Copyblogger. Sonia Siimone quoted it from The Art of Possibiliity by Bernard and Roz Zander.
Although I like the concept, enlarging is not a catchy term.
I’m changing it to maxing the box.
It’s similar to that seventies’ expression, expandiing your consciousness, but without the LSD.
Speaking of hallucinations,or taking a page from those Secret people, I can just see it: management consultants, executive coaches and wikipedia talking about maxing the box. Maxing the box on everyone’s Power Point slides.
You can tell them you read it here first. Or you can come up with a better expression. Just, don’t try to think out of the box, please.
Awesome must be the most over-used word in North America. So let’s stop using it as our default every time we are too lazy or busy or insecure or stupid or whatever to think of a more original or relevant word.
Let’s stop using it because we’re middle-aged business people who think it makes us look cool. It doesn’t.
Let’s stop using it because we are so riveted to the game control, iPhone or other obsessions that we begrudge the brain cells required to process language.
Scary awful meanings
Despite the monotonous ubiquity, most people seem unaware of the full meaning. In addition to inspiring joyful awe, awesome can mean inspiring terror, as in “the awesome power of the sea.”
Not only that, the word awful, I discovered, is actually a synonym for awesome, providing you communicate in an olde English dialect. Gee, I’m starting to sound like Grammar Girl. Back to the anti-awesome movement I’m trying to muster.
In my quest for alternatives to awesome, I checked with Wikipedia, thesaurus.com and some other sources. I also asked people on Facebook and other social media, where I often spot the biggest offenders. Most recently, readers of Ragan.com, where this post appeared, added some zingers. Thank you, everyone.
I deleted “amazing” from my earlier list after several Ragan readers complaints about its overuse. As Jackie O wrote: ” ‘amazing’ is used by empty-headed little marketing girls who think that every occurrence in their day is worthy of it. I once asked one of these little dim bulbs if I could get her a glass of water. Her reply was “that would be amazing”. Really? Had someone been torturing this woman by denying her water? ”
The anti-awesome list
Please add your suggestions in the comments below.
astonishing
awe-inspiring
awe-struck
beautiful
beyond the call
breathtaking
brilliant
clever
cool
dazzling
epic
excellent
exceptional
exciting
fabulous
fantastic
great
groovy
heart-stopping
humbling
impressive
incredible
ingenious
magnificent
majestic
marvelous
mind-blowing
momentous
moving
out of this world
outstanding
overwhelming
phenomenal
powerful
remarkable
righteous
shazam
sick
simply divine
spectacular
staggering
striking
stunning
stupendous
superb
sweet
terrific
the bees’ knees
the bomb
wow
splendiferous
fantasmagorical
un-freakin believable
wonderful
wondrous
you rock
I don’t want to banish awesome entirely. Occasionally, it is the best choice. But I would love to hear a little more thought behind those robotic mouth movements.
Let me add that no one is required to use any of the words on this list that make them uncomfortable. These are simply options. You choose.
For those of you who want to keep it simple, try a word from this list the next time you are tempted to slip into awesome. Maybe you should give yourself a daily awesome limit, then wean yourself gradually.
For those of you with more alternatives, please add them below in the Comments section. I’ll update the post with them.
Welcome to the anti-awesome movement, oh wise ones.