Make your words mean something
But don’t tell me which words I can and can’t use.
A couple of years ago, I read a post on LinkedIn from someone who worked in Communications berating people for using the word “ensure” and suggesting Comms people should be ‘fined’ for using it. The rationale was that you can’t “ensure” anything these days or something like that.
Ugh. I hate these posts on LinkedIn.
The problem is that loads of Comms people all piled in agreeing with the sentiment and adding their own bugbear words in the comments, while, I’m sure, hundreds of onlookers kept quiet about their prolific use of some of the terms being lambasted.
We use a rich language
- The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has about 200,000 words, including the archaic and obsolete words. Some websites claim English has more than 1m words.
- On a daily basis, we barely use 0.5% of the words from the OED.
- Teenagers in the U.K. reportedly use just 800 different words each day, which Jean Gross, England’s former Communication Champion for Children, said could impact negatively on their chances of getting a job.
- Writing guides and top tips on how to blog tell us that we should use simpler language rather than business jargon and advanced vocabulary so as not to alienate people.
I’m all for straight talking. There are countless business phrases I detest, although I’d admit to using many of them in the past. Sometimes, the workplace — and the audience — warrants it.
But I’m not about to insist people omit certain words from their vocabulary or shame people into dropping the odd buzzphrase from their business update. The more we do that, the more we constrain what we can and can’t say.
At the end of the day, it’s about making sure your audience understands what you’re saying or writing. Ensuring they do, in fact.
Know your audience
- If you’re using technical jargon for a technical audience, that’s fine.
- If you’re using business buzzphrases for an audience that will be nodding in agreement, that’s fine.
- If some words make your audience look up the meaning, that’s fine (just make sure it’s the exception rather than every other sentence).
… but make sure your words mean something to them and they understand.
Otherwise, they’re just words.
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