There’s plenty more where this comes from. I’ve got another 70 at least, so this will just be the first in a series of posts. Leave your suggestions in the comments or tweet them under #wordsthatshouldbebanned. Click on hyperlinked words for fuller coverage on goodcopybadcopy.
In no particular order . . .
1. Bandwidth
Please don’t tell me you don’t have the “bandwidth” to take on a project. I’ll just assume you mean you don’t have the mental capacity to do it. And I’m probably right. (more…)
Sooo, the last person on a final salary pension left the firm years ago.
Repeated rounds of redundancies have left people wondering if they’re next out the door.
And you’ve just asked your workers to take a pay cut because “we all need to pull together to survive the recession” (and, ahem, because your now departed chief financial officer decided to refinance the company with a derivative contract that Goldman Sachs told him would make him look great in front of his boss. Jeez, what kind of an idiot agrees to be on the other side of a bet with Goldman Sachs?)
But despite all this, you still think your employees have an intense, emotional attachment to their work. And that the phrase “a passion for excellence” captures exactly how your firm gets things done. (more…)
One of the downsides of living in a western industrialised nation is that you’re constantly being bombarded with mendacious marketing messages by charlatans trying to sell you something that’s free, abundant and available on tap – literally.
The chief way they do it is to suggest that bottled water offers health benefits that mere tap water can’t offer. I guess it makes us all feel a little less squeamish about paying for something we’re given for free when people across whole swathes of the planet are dying of thirst every day. (more…)
Are you a manager or a leader? I bet I could tell you which one you are from your writing style. (more…)
Request, please. When you’re emailing me, please don’t use the words “advise” and “revert”.
Nothing wrong with those words, you may say. True enough. If, that is, they’re used correctly. (more…)
Have you noticed that the word “education” has gone out of fashion? Yep, it’s been replaced by “learning” – that horrible, anaemic little word favoured by people who believe that thinking is an elitist activity. (more…)
I can honestly say that I can think of no possible situation in which I would find the need to use the word “facilitate”. It’s got far too many syllables, for a start. (more…)
Oh, I’m perfectly happy for you to use the word “impact”.
If, that is, you’re writing a paper on ballistics, a police report about a car crash, or a summary of theories of how the dinosaurs were wiped out.
But use it to describe anything other than one object coming forcibly into contact with another, and I’ll dismiss you as an illiterate fool. (more…)
Don’t get me wrong, “boutique” as a noun is fine. It’s “boutique” as an adjective that grates. From hotels to hedge funds, it seems that everything is “boutique” these days. (more…)
Here’s something annoying that I’m spotting more and more often: journalists’ increasing use of the word “decline” when they mean “refuse”. (more…)
