What buzzwords and catchphrases do you love or hate?
Personally, I love to hate the following buzzwords:
Team
I’m a proud individualist, so I’m not endeared to the word team at all.
And I especially hate it when it’s used in place of the word staff.
Personally, if I’m a staff member I know that I’m a staff member and I’m happy to be called a staff member.
Calling me a team member makes me feel like I’m part of some odd sexually inappropriate sect that I need to escape from immediately.
I actually love people and working with them most of the time, but I don’t rely on being part of a collective for anything in life.
Craft
Seriously, where’s the bucket? I create amazing marketing copy, I don’t craft it.
While I have to admit that I have used this word in the past, I now won’t touch it with a barge pole.
Whether I’m looking at a product or service based business website, everyone is apparently crafting something these days. Even a dog food website I looked at the other day told me that the business was crafting nutritious and tasty dog food.
If I see this word one more time I’m going to run screaming for the woods.
And in any case, the word has no place on my website because this is not my craft; it’s my business, my work and my income.
And that’s a good thing, because I’m actually completely awful at craft of any kind anyway. I couldn’t even make a simple rectangular pencil box that came out anything near rectangular in year 8 woodwork.
Reach Out
If you want to encourage me to contact you if I need anything, just say that I can contact/call/email you.
I’m not contacting a counselling service, for *uck’s sake. I don’t “reach out” when I want to contact someone in my personal life, I call, message or email them.
Why should this counselling term that was traditionally used in a situation where someone had a personal crisis happening now be used in a business context?
The next time someone tells me to reach out, I’m going to tell them to *uck off.
Resilience
Look, we’re actually extremely resilient already as a result of what we’ve lived through in Australia in recent years, and in the years before that.
Individually, we’re as tough as nails, and we’ll take care of our own resilience ourselves, thank you very much.
In essence, we’re used to having a sore arse and we’ll continue to get stronger every day as a result of what we continue to experience in life.
As my awesome friend Louise says, banging on about resilience all the time has become associated with the complete opposite, with the word popping up in conjunction with practices that don’t foster the development of resilience and strength in individuals at all.
Recognise
The word recognise has been so terribly over-used in recent years a result of all the bullshit symbolism that has become standard practice in this country, a topic which Jacinta Price covers extremely eloquently in her awesome book Matters of the Heart. “Recognise” has become associated with the ridiculous practice of including a statement in your email signature that tells other people that you’re acknowledging indigenous people and their elders prehistoric, past, present, emerging and just a twinkle in their father’s eye.
We all know that this is complete tokenistic bullshit, and that most people who have this statement included in their email signature have never even spoken to an indigenous Australian person.
I have the greatest respect for indigenous Australians, and Australians from all other cultural backgrounds as well. I don’t need to include this recognition crap within my email signature because I treat everyone with respect already, like the great majority of my fellow Australians do.
If I was an indigenous Australian, I would find all of this totally pathetic and completely laughable.
We’re all Different and You Might Love a Buzzword That I Hate
I think it’s a beautiful thing that the buzzwords and catchphrases that each of us love and hate are totally different. For example, I absolutely love the phrase, “getting my ducks in a row.” I love it because it gives me a vision of lining up a number of cute yellow rubber ducks on the surface of bubble covered bath water. However, I completely understand the fact that other people might hate it because of their own personal and work experiences.
For example, you might have worked in a medical practice like the poor person in this fabulous BuzzFeed article People Are Sharing The Cringey Work Buzzword That They Can’t Stand, And I’m Filled With Second-Hand Frustration by Megan Liscomb, where the word “leakage” was used when patients were seeking care outside of the practice, when this word brings to mind something completely different for some of us?
Cripes.
However, I think it’s important to state that I’m most definitely not against commonly used words or phrases per se. Commonly used words, catchphrases and clichés actually really do hit the spot sometimes and I’m not a snob who thinks I’m above using them.
Writing at its core is about communication and shared meaning, and if many of us understand, enjoy and use a particular word or phrase, that’s great.
Words and Phrases That I Love
Anyway, I’d like to end this article on a positive and light hearted note with some words and phrases that I love.
They’re not actually buzzwords or catchphrases, they’re just fun to use and life’s too short not to have fun with anything and everything we can.
Tits Up
My amazing friend Milly uses the phrase “tits up” when things have gone pear shaped in her day or her week. The phrase captures shit going awry just perfectly.
I absolutely love this expression and I’m forever grateful to Milly for introducing me to it.
Word Vomit
A fabulous client Maria used the awesome phrase “word vomit” when she advised that she was going to send me a brain dump of her thoughts in order for me to develop a page on her website.
I love this phrase because it’s such a lively and visual way of describing the process of dumping information out of our beautiful brains.
And in one of the many brilliant episodes of Kath and Kim, a hilarious reference is made to being a “Carmen Sutra” in relation to be a hot sexual woman who is knowledgeable about the kama sutra. Let’s face it, we all like to think of ourselves as a bit of a Carmen Sutra, and Gina Riley and Jane Turner are legends who delivered vast amounts of joy to Australians with their work.
Thanks for reading this blog article, and if you need professionally written marketing copy that keeps clients transfixed, give me a call.
© Annemaree Jensen