People’s time is scarce, and their attention is precious. If you want to get your audience to read your emails, newsletters, posts, etc., then follow Jill Konrath‘s advice and diamond-cut the following words out of your writing. (They fall into three categories.)
Self-Promoting Puffery
- One-stop shopping
- Industry leader
- Breakthrough
- Partner
- Groundbreaking
- Impressive
- Unique
- Innovative
- State-of-the-art
- Powerful
- Outstanding
- Cost-effective
- Experienced
- Number one
- Premier
Technical tripe
- Next-generation
- Disruptive
- Flexible
- Robust
- World-class
- Easy-to-use
- Cutting-edge
- Value-added
- Mission-critical
- Leading-edge
- Turnkey
- Best-of-breed
- Enterprise-class
- User-friendly
- Scalable
Creative Crap
- Outside the box
- Revolutionary
- The big idea
- Synergy
- Dramatic
- Strategic
- Game changer
- Customer-centric
- Voice of the customer
- Critical mass
- Buzz
- Make it pop
- Break through the clutter
- Next level
- Impactful
Jill has given us a good list of the jargon that annoys people in business. What would you add to her list? What are some of the cliches, buzzwords, and overused terms you see in the nonprofit sector?
Dennis,
You’ve already included several terms that make me cringe like thinking outside the box and impactful, but I’ll add return on investment.