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Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Words That Hurt
No, not words that cause emotional damage; words that make the stomach churn. Words that cause rumbling and recoil.
The worst offender has to be “utilize.” If you use it, you’re not alone. It seems to be one of the most prolific words in business communications. But to me (and I’m not alone—see what Random House’s Media Maven has to say) it smacks of pretentiousness and insecurity. “Utilize” does have a valid meaning: “to turn to profitable use; to make a practical use for.” But in 99% of the cases I’ve seen, it replaces “use.” For that matter, a lot of people will write “employ” instead of “use.” Whatsa matta with “use”? It’s a lovely little word—just three letters that mean so much.
Use “use”!
Other words I see too much or which otherwise and even irrationally make me cringe:
- Synergy (or synergistic)
- Actionable (used sometimes in marketing copy to mean “prompting a desired action” (e.g., “we produce actionable results”) ... “actionable” really means “giving sufficient reason to take legal action”!
- Important, efficient, and effective (they’re fine used sparingly, but it’s tempting to abuse them)
- Grow (as in “grow the business”—it’s inelegant to my ear, though I’m sure I’ve pulled it out from time to time)
- Impact (overused: try “effect” for a noun or “affect” or “influence” for verbs)
- Impactful (I liked what someone had to say on the Visual Thesaurus: “Apparently, ‘impactful’ is a word (and by this I mean it’s recognized by a handful of reasonably reputable sources). I think it sounds horrible, like an impacted wisdom tooth or, heaven forefend, an impacted bowel.”
For more ranting on horrible words, see this entry by a British guy. I like the quote he uses to starts his piece:
“Words that are horrible to one writer may not be horrible to another,” says John Grimond in The Economist Style Guide (Profile Books, 2005). “But if you are a writer for whom no words are horrible, you would do well to take up some other activity.”
Got any you want to share? It might feel good ...
