Oh, how I miss the late, great Jargonator, the Gable Group’s tool to help PR pros cut buzzwords from their releases.

Here are three items from the site’s list of the most offensive PR buzzwords:

• Leading. “Trying to find a press release without the word ‘leader’ is like trying to find a Diet Coke in a Pepsi plant.”
• Best-of-breed. “Why would anyone use a phrase that can be just as easily applied to a Chihuahua or a poodle?”
• Solution. “The most overused word in press releases today. Companies used to sell products, now they sell solutions. Dog food bowls are pet-feeding solutions, chairs are sitting solutions, cars are transportation solutions.”

You (or your approvers) may think that buzz phrases — aka words or phrases from Silicon Valley, management, marketing or popular culture — make your message sound more important. But they are actually barriers to communication that make your messages harder to read and understand. (Play a few rounds of Buzzword Bingo if you’re not convinced.)

Stop ‘making the world a better place.’

I love how the characters on HBO’s “Silicon Valley” overuse the phrase, “Making the world a better place.”

Take this speech from the pilot:

And, from another episode:

And the stuff runs screaming for the door …

It seems so ridiculous, but don’t forget how often you hear this level of jargon in real life. Recently The New Republic CEO Guy Vidra said he would transform the 100-year-old publication into a “vertically integrated digital media company.”

For senior editor Julia Ioffe and a bunch of her colleagues, it meant that it was time to leave.

“We don’t know what their vision is,” she said. “It is Silicon Valley mumbo jumbo buzzwords that don’t mean anything.”

Does this buzzword make my brain look big?

Of course you have my permission to make fun of corporate buzzwords, as The Principal’s Derek Lippincott does with this delightful glossary:

• Competencies: Things we don’t suck at.
• Core: Everything is “core” these days. Core values. Core competencies. Core capabilities. Core – Porate jargon.
• Incentivize: The act of planning to give someone a die-cast NASCAR to award a desired behavior.
• Opportunity: Saying “improving claims accuracy is an opportunity for Bob” means BOB SUCKS AT CLAIMS. People need to tell Bob he needs to work on his claims, not say he has an “opportunity” to get better.
• Task: When used as a verb. “I’m going to task Paula to go get me a cookie.”

Avoid business buzzwords.

But with that exception, please think again before using corporate buzz phrases like these in your messages:

• Leveraging our assets
• Mission-critical
• Conversate
• Information touchpoint
• Synopsize
• Electronify
• Price-optimized
• Targeted completion date
• Relanguage
• Computerate
• Critical path
• Professional learning community

You’re not making the world a better place. You’re just making your readers crazy.

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Richard Teerlink, chairman of Harley-Davidson, stands in front of a screen showing a bicep emblazoned with his company’s logo.

“We don’t call them tattoos any more,” he told his audience. Instead, he said, they are now “dermatological graphics.”

Of course you don’t, Mr. Teerlink.

Just like we don’t call it a company, talking, hiring consultants or coming up with ideas any more. Now they’re the enterprise, interfacing, utilizing change agents and ideation.

Jargon. Buzzwords. Acronyms. They’re things that make your reader go “huh?” And we need to get them out of our message.

Here are just a few ways jargon affects communication. Jargon:

1. Makes readers work harder.

When Jim Evans joined Jenny Craig as CEO, even he couldn’t understand the acronyms.

“There were too many for me to decipher, and only those who had been on board for at least a few years could understand them all,” he said.

When people can’t interpret the language of the organization:

• Employees misunderstand instructions
• Newbies have a longer learning curve
• Culturally and geographically diverse team members can’t comprehend what their colleagues are saying.

Your audience may eventually figure out what you’re saying. But isn’t it your job to translate jargon so your reader doesn’t have to?

2. Makes ideas harder to “see.”

We say “I see” to mean “I understand.” Help readers “see” your point by translating jargon into visual language.

We see a tattoo, for instance. We don’t see a “dermatalogical graphic.”

Poet William Carlos Williams counseled writers to “turn ideas into things.” Jargon turns things into a wall of words.

3. Causes buzzword backlash.

People are livid about the amount of jargon and buzzwords writers use these days.

• You’ve seen the Dilbert cartoons where the staff plays buzzword bingo against the pointy-haired boss.
• You’ve visited websites that poke fun of buzzword-packed press releases.
• You’ve heard journalists and bloggers rant against press releases that are so discombobulating that even beat reporters can’t follow them.

In this environment, it’s never been more important to translate the language of our organizations into the language of our readers.

___

Sources: “Abolish the acronyms!” Ragan Report, July 19, 2004

Annette Fuentes, “Mortgage jargon can spell disaster,” USA Today, July 18, 2007

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Why avoid jargon? Because jargon is a barrier to communication.

Jargon:

1. Makes your website harder to find and use.

When it comes to medical terms, readers don’t know what communicators are talking about, according to T. J. and Sandar Larkin.

We say “hemorrhage”; they say “bleeding.” We say “sutures”; they say “stitches.” We say “metastasize”; they say, “the cancer is spreading.”

Searchers use the “wrong” medical term 59% of the time when researching health issues on the web, according to a study by Alexa T. McCray, et al. In fact, more than three-quarters of Americans didn’t know that “hemorrhage” meant “bleeding,” according to a study by E.B. Learner, et al. More than one-third didn’t know that a fractured bone was broken.

Whether you’re in the medical, money-management or mobile home business, translate your industry’s language into your reader’s language. If you want to reach your readers with SEO, use the words in your readers’ heads, not the words in your head.

2. Reduces media coverage.

Jargon also makes it harder for the media to use your PR materials. Most Canadian journalists, for instance, believe that press releases filled with jargon frequently “get in the way” of their doing their jobs, according to a study by National Public Relations.

U.S. journalists agree, according to a study by Greentarget. Corporate spin, compound modifiers and industry jargon make it harder for them to do their jobs, they say.

But don’t take their word for it. The Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten’s not crazy about jargon, either. He writes:

3. Cuts back on friends, fans and followers.

Facebook users don’t like jargon and buzzwords, according to viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella. Using data from HubSpot’s Facebook Grader, Zarrella found that while the average Facebook page has 624 fans, those that use corporate buzzwords have fewer followers.

Don’t repel friends, fans and followers: Write social media postings in the language of those you wish to reach.

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Sources: “What the Media Want,” National Public Relations, 2001

Gene Weingarten, “Read It and Lacrimate,” The Washington Post, May 20, 2007

T.J. Larkin and Sandar Larkin, “Health on the Web: Finding the Right Word,” Larkin Page, #33, March 2006

Alexa T. McCray, Russell F. Loane, Allen C. Browne and Anantha K. Bangalore; “Terminology Issues in User Access to Web-based Medical Information,” Proceedings of the AMIA Symposium, 1999, p. 107-111

Timothy B. Patrick, Harpreet K. Monga, MaryEllen C. Sievert, Joan ton Hall and Daniel R. Longo; “Evaluation of Controlled Vocabulary Resources for Development of a Consumer Entry Vocabulary for Diabetes,” Journal of Medical Internet Research, vol. 3, no. 3, 2001

E.B. Lerner, D.V. Jehle, D.M. Janicke and R.M. Moscati; “Medical Communication: Do our Patients Understand?” American Journal of Emergency Medicine, vol. 18, no. 7, November 2000, p. 764-766

Qing T. Zeng and Tony Tse, “Exploring and Developing Consumer Health Vocabularies,” Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, vol. 13, no. 1, Jan/Feb 2006, p. 24-29.

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