Ban Buzzwords & Gobbledygook

Every once in a while someone, most recently Marketing Sherpa, dashes off a rant about bad business writing. SherpaBlog was interviewing David Meerman Scott, a long-time opponent of gobbledygook.

I’m all for this . For one thing, the torrent of buzzwords and gobbledygook we endure daily is just plain boring. It’s also pretentious.

It’s sad to see a business created and stewarded by dynamic original thinkers allowing its marketers to say“we offer innovative value-added services and cutting-edge best practices.” George Orwell, in his most famous and worthwhile essay, called this type of writing

gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.

What’s wrong with “optimizing strategic interfacing for catalyzing performance-based results-driven paradigm shifts?” Says Orwell:

….every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one’s brain.

What more need be said? Please join the fight to keep the marketing world free of verbal anesthetics.