Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Fighting flab

What got me rolling here was a short presentation I gave the staff on flabby language. I'd considered offering one-hour tutorials and bringing in pizza, but time's money in our business. Plan B was to do a couple of minutes at each all-hands meeting.
Here are some offenders I called out:

"Have already partnered/worked/etc." If you're using the past tense, it's already happened (or, I should say, 'it's happened.')

"Existing customers." If you keep using that construction with more pedantic customers, they won't be customers for long. What about "future customers" you ask. Well, in some circles we call those "prospects."

"Proven track record." A record is a record is a record. It's inherently proven because it's a record. If you want to get extreme, kill "track."

"Offers the ability to achieve unrivaled reach..." As a rule, ability is abused as a word in the communications business. In fact it's almost never used to describe someone's talents, as it should be. In the case here, "can reach," "offers unrivaled reach" work just fine.
And the best for last: "Brands seamlessly woven into XYZ’s vault of rich media." Not quite sure what that means, but weaves don't have seams; stitched materials do. And weaving something into a vault is a helluva technological achievement that even our asonishing age hasn't accomplished.

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