You can always spot the new/bad writer — they’re the ones who fervently believe if they use dramatic, purple prose, with lots of flowery adjectives and fancy-schmancy words that end in -ly, the enthralled reader will be captivated by their breath-taking abilities.
No, it just makes me want to puke.
Similarly, you can tell the new/bad marketer, because they’re the ones who spew business jargon like a baby eating a cracker.
They also make me want to puke.
I found a slide deck on 15 marketing buzzwords (see below) we need to quit using now. I’m happy to say I don’t use 14 of them. (I still like to say “content marketing,” but now I feel guilty about it.)
But I also know that a lot of people create a lot of bullshit terms (check out the Dack.com bullshit generator here), and I realized what the problem was.
It’s adverbs and adjectives.
No, seriously!
Think about it. Ernest Hemingway is considered one of the greatest writers of our time, and it was a rare adjective that made its way into his prose. Same goes for adverbs. Why describe a verb, when you can just use a better verb?
And yet we do that with a lot of our marketing jargon as well.
- Best-of-breed
- Cutting edge
- Value-added
- Revolutionary
- Scalable
- Epic
And so on.
Sadly, this won’t eliminate all of the business jargon, but I’m hoping that just by limiting yourself to nouns and verbs — “I love this coffee” instead of “This is epic coffee!” — it may jar your brain enough to start speaking like a normal person again.
If you could even do this with your writing, you’ll find it’s much easier to read and understand.
(And yes, I realize “easier” is an adverb. But then again, I’m not Ernest Hemingway.)
