Buzz Words that are annoying

"Status."

"Model status"

"Rockstar status"

"Playa status"

Originally Posted by datasupa

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close the deal

big fan of this one in a social setting i.e. saw you leave with that cute girl...did you close/seal the deal?

Originally Posted by Journeyman

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I am particularly irritated by "to grow" when used in a sentence such as "We plan to grow our business by 30% this year."

What's wrong with saying "increase", for example?
Using "grow" in the sense of "grow the firm" not only sounds awkward, it also seems to have pervaded virtually all corporate press releases that I read nowadays.

What about build? I like build.

I always hated grow when I was working for a small .com back in 2000. But I thought all companies that used words like 'grow' all fell apart during the .com crash when the rest of the world realized that a .com company didn't do anything other than come up with stupid buzz words?

I also hate leverage. It puts me in mind of some wanker trying to take advantage of something without having to do any work.

"We're going to grow the business by synergising our marketing and customer service departments and leverage that against the current customer culture." - Sound like a total tosser.

"We are going to build the business by increasing communication and sharing business processes between the marketing and customer service department. We will then be able to attract and keep more customers." - Sounds like you know what the hell you're on about.

Originally Posted by Thomas

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Action Item. As in, will you own this action item?
It doesn't annoy me that much but I wonder why "task" or "job" aren't good enough.

I just saw this one on TV: Obaminee.......srsly?

Originally Posted by odoreater

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I do it because, sometimes, there is just no better way to say things, and I know that a judge will understand what I mean. For example, from a brief I wrote recently: "these recent violations are simply the latest in a long list of violations, to wit,[lists the rest of the violations]..."

Try "these violations are simply the latest in a long list: violation 1, violation 2, violation 3 etc."

If you ever get a chance, take a legal writing CLE course taught by Bryan Garner, editor of Black's Law Dictionary and author of "Legal Writing In Plain English". He also recently co-authored a book on advocacy with Justice Scalia. His web site is http://www.lawprose.org/ . Highly recommended.

"Core competency" bugs me to no end.

My job is to translate and proofread corporatese bullshit like "We will enhance our customer service capabilities by leveraging our core competencies to provide dymanic solutions for business in today's increasingly globalized marketplace."

Then there's "debottlenecking." Whoever coined that deserves his own special corner of hell.

"We achieved a 20% increase in production capacity through debottlenecking of our processing facilities in the latter half of fiscal 2007."

Originally Posted by Nantucket Red

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Then there's "debottlenecking." Whoever coined that deserves his own special corner of hell.

Wow, that's a new one for me. "Debottlenecking " strikes me as especially insidious.

Originally Posted by Brad

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Wow, that's a new one for me. "Debottlenecking " strikes me as especially insidious.

The amazing thing is that other editors I have worked with go to extraordinary lengths to skirt this ugly buzzword, like "eliminated bottlenecks," but corporate busybodies always change it back to "debottlenecking."

Buzzwords suck. They suck even more when someone throws some casual-sounds words in the mix in an attempt sound like they're down to earth despite their inability to say anything concretely. "I'm going to take a minute to speak to leveraging extrapolation of some high-level metrics. That cool, bro?" Yeah. It's cool.

Originally Posted by Nantucket Red

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The amazing thing is that other editors I have worked with go to extraordinary lengths to skirt this ugly buzzword, like "eliminated bottlenecks," but corporate busybodies always change it back to "debottlenecking."

Bottlenecking, alone, deserves to be on the list of annoying buzzwords.

Also on the list: trad.

how about "skill set"?

and "icon"?

the 'brand'

and the use of "task" as a verb: "...Jack...do you know how a big a deal it is to re-task a satellite"?

Another thing that annoys me is seeing ridiculous words on people's resume. I do not want to see how you "spearheaded" something. Be formal, but you don't have to use words that you never hear in real life. Be human.