"moving forward", i counted how many times my boss said that in an hour and a half meeting last month–6 times!! Arrghhh!
moving forward, but to a lesser degree, ‘eclectic’ If you can’t describe it, then don’t.
and ‘panties’, c’mon, how old are we?
Ok, I’m with you on “utilize”. But what’s wrong with “some”? And of course “supposably” is a word. If people use it, how could it not be a word? What exactly do you think it is?
And I still say W is a word, when referencing our alleged President – it’s a proper noun, not a character, not part of an acronym, not even an initial in that context.
I also have to differ on much (but not all) of the business jargon. It’s much easier, for example, for me to ask “Is this actionable?” than to say, “Should I be doing something about this?”
Oh, and don’t go blaming your insanity on the language. 
A couple more:
‘enhance’ (for ‘improve’)
‘cleanse’ (for c’lean’)
I dunno, Roger… “ethnic cleaning” just lacks a certain oomph.
I’d add “ethnic cleansing” to the list. Prefabricated expressions of this type, see also “collateral damage”, desensitise us, and both obscure and ameliorate the horror and reality of what they are meant to signify.
I agree with you. But what term would you use (real question, not rhetorical)? “Genocide” seems to me even more clinical than “ethnic cleansing”. Do we just say “killing everybody”? The term “mass murder” isn’t specific enough to refer to genocide in particular.
On the other hand, even these prefab terms usually lose their sterility. “Janitor” was once a high-brow euphemism, but it eventually gathered all the negative connotations of previous terms and had to be replaced by “custodian” and then “maintenance technician” and other such terms. Same for “secretary” -> “administrative assistant”, and “cripple” -> “handicapped” -> “physically challenged” etc.
Like water, words soon find their own level. Although there are plenty of words and phrases that make me wince (“homicide bomber” must be the worst offender), when you think about it there are very few bits of jargon and newspeak that don’t succumb to the pressure of usage. We forget their origins, they become transparent, we come to focus on what’s meant, not what’s said.
My PhD thesis was about this type of thing. Bottom line: writing clearly is very hard work.
Here are some of my favourite authors on the importance of clarity in writing (in no particular order):
Karl Popper (Objective Knowledge, 77): ‘What are the criteria by which we can recognize truth, or a sufficient reason? Either by the strength of the belief, which is hardly rationally defensible, or by its clearness and distinctness.’
Popper (The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol II, 296): ‘Clear speaking is speaking in such a way that words do not matter.’
Joseph Carroll (Evolution and Literary Theory, 435) notes that vagueness (as employed for example by Michel Foucault) has the advantage of being more defensible.
W. J. T. Mitchell (Critical Inquiry 1982 Volume 8, Number 4): *t must be said that excessive clarity and facility have not been our problems, but obfuscation and mystification sometimes have.’
Christopher Lasch (The Revolt of the Elites, 203): ‘Whenever his prose veers to close to clarity, [Nathanson] interjects an explanation that defies explanation.’
Popper (The Myth of the Framework, 44): ‘Truth is hard to come by … Serious critical discussions are always difficult. Non-rational human elements such as personal problems always enter. Many participants in a rational, that is, a critical, discussion find it particularly difficult that they have to unlearn what their instincts seem to teach them … that is to win … A discussion which you win but which fails to help you to change or to clarify your mind at least a little should be regarded as a sheer loss. For this very reason no change in one’s position should be made surreptitiously, but it should always be stressed and its consequences explored … Rational discussion in this sense … does not aim at conversion.’
C.S. Lewis (‘Before we can communicate’ in First and Second Things, 124-128) warns of the danger of spending years discussing and defending your ideas to others of your own sort, who ‘are all talking the same language and all move in the same world of discourse’ (1985, 127). The crunch comes when you have to explain the same view to someone outside your circle, when you discover that you have never ‘really understood what you have so long maintained’, because you’ve never really thought it out ‘to the end’ (127). Lewis warns against the use of jargon, or a ‘private language’ which ‘may delude ourselves as well as mystifying others’ (128). What we derive from such enchanted words ‘may sometimes be not so much a clear conception as a heart-warming sense of being at home and among our own sort. “We understand each other” often means “We are in sympathy”. Sympathy is a good thing. It mat even be in some ways a better thing than intellectual understanding. But not the same thing.’
In answer to your question, I would use whatever words were necessary and appropriate for the situation. I can’t be the only person who shakes his head when the news headlines are full of stuff about what definition the UN is going to give to “genocide”.
Interesting to see who you read, Roger. You and I are in different theoretical camps (with some overlap, of course).
<pre-emptive>I don’t offer an alt reading list b/c [1] it would be a hijack, and [2] I left academia on less than amicable terms and don’t care to revisit at the moment.</pre-emptive>
Thanks for the note. I like your example too–“decimate” doesn’t necessarily imply defeat or total destruction. It’s a measure of an effect, like the verb “halve.” I can deal with people using it liberally, but “I was decimated” cannot be used interchangeably with “I was the loser” or “there was major destruction.” You can’t say “She decimated me in that video game” or “that house was decimated.” There’s no quanitifiable beginning state! I guess that you could destroy a certain percentage of the structure of a house, but that’s stretching it…
Back to hating on words, I hate the word “penchant.” And “specificity.” And must uses of “codified” as an adjective. Many people I know cringe at “salve.”
Ok, not a single word, but a usage…
Saying that something is X times smaller / fewer / etc. than something else.
This makes no sense.
My neighbor’s house may be 3 times larger than mine, but my house can’t be 3 times smaller than his. 3 times what?
I can have 5 times more sleepless nights than my wife, but she can’t have 5 times fewer sleepless nights than I do. And my remaining life expectancy can’t be 4 times less than hers if I get cancer.
My house can be 1/3 the size of my neighbor’s, and my wife can have 1/5 the number of sleepless nights that I have, and my remaining life expectancy can be 1/4 of hers if I get cancer. But X times less is nonsense.
You can, but for clarity, I would say “six times as many”.
Crisp is already an adjective. It doesn’t need a “y” on the end of it to turn it into one.
You say “dark” and not “darky”.
You say “warm” and not “warmy”.
You say “blank” and not “blankyy”.
You say “crisp” and not “crispy”.
My bef is with double negatives! Who needs them? And, as George Zorwell noted, they are used by people who are trying to impress! Blast them all It is not unsurprising that p[eople like that get pitted!!
Okay, hang on. I love the word “panties.” What do you think we should call them, underwear? Underwear are those big enveloping ones that my mom wears; panties are the little cute sexy ones that I wear. There’s a difference.
I have a mild peeve against the word “contact” when used as a verb, as in “If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me.” Once upon a time the correct phrase would have been “Please call me,” but now we’re in the e-age (heh, sorry) and so it’s “Please call or e-mail me,” which is too cumbersome. So I regretfully concede that “Please contact me” is not going to go away. I don’t like it, though.
Well then, I got a bef with you, pal.
Sometimes, the “not un-” construction is useful. To my ear, saying that something is “not unbeautiful” is meaningfully different from saying it’s “beautiful”. I even like the quirky sound of “not unbeautiful”, the playfulness of it, the indirectness of its implications.
What’s wrong with “about”? I see reporters use “some” a lot, competely bypassing the perfectly good word “about.” I can understand them wanting to break it up a bit, using “about” once, and the “some” and then returing to “about.” But to make a complete switch, eliminating the use of “about” makes me nuts.
Yes, it is found in the dictionary, but is often used incorrectly. Typically, when people use this word they mean “supposedly,” which has a different meaning.
“Ain’t” was used for decades in speech before it became an actual word: in other words, before it appeared in the dictionary.
W is a proper noun.
Anyone can make up a word and use it in speech regularly, but there are people - vast numbers of people - who are responsible for monitoring and even protecting the English language in every way possible. That is not to say that English - and language in general - does not evolve; it does. But there are rules in the English language that many people see as mere interpretation. I had a friend who said he didn’t use the possessive apostrophe in words such as “grocer’s” because he didn’t like the way it looked and it wasn’t necessary because everyone knew what he meant. 
He truly believed that this was acceptable - that the rules of the English language are suggestions - and thought that every other writer of the English language did the same thing.
At the end of the day, does it really matter if we intsrtumentationize the facility, or commoditize it? Instrumentating as its advantages, but idealistically, we want to eliminate the single point of redundancy [sic] and maximize buy-in from the stakeholders. Can we get there without being negatively impactful of the revenue streams? If we incent the stakeholders to prioritize their todos so that our goals align with theirs, then at the end of the day we are at a place we can live.
And why, why, why must people use “impact” when they mean “effect”?
Impact: a striking together; violent contact; collision.
Effect: anything brought about by a cause or agent; result
Nothing. The 2 are interchangeable.
Why? I really don’t understand this. It’s like complaining that some people use “many” instead of “several” too much, or vice versa. You’re just objecting to someone else’s dialect.
I have friends from PA who say “it needs cleaned” instead of “it needs cleaning”. It’s just the way they talk. Some folks prefer “some” to “about”. Are you worried that “about” is going to get its feelings hurt?
Huh? “Actual words” are the words people use and understand. Appearing in the dictionary means zip. There is no Real Academia in the US, thank God. In any case, use of “ain’t” predates the first English dictionary by more than decades.
Who? Protecting it from what? I’ve made my living with words for most of my adult life. I’ve taught English at university and worked as a writer and proofer for years. I’ve never heard of these people.
So, do you believe that Shakespeare and Swift were wrong until people stopped objecting to their vulgar usage, at which point they became right? Were they right from then on only, or do they get to be right retroactively?
It drives me up the wall to hear mavens like William Safire rattle off the etymology of a word in all its changes, then in almost the same breath claim that the majority of people are misusing it. Do they believe that linguistic evolution ceased when they learned their vocabulary lessons in grade school?
Take the tiresome “disinterested/uninterested” debate. The meanings of these words have been fluid for some time, but you’ll still find people all over who are willing to insist that “disinterested” “really means” “uninvolved” and “uninterested” “really means” “not caring”, as if these sounds and characters were imbued with inherent significance. Rot.
Very funny. 
However, I’d say that some chunks of that are both meaningful and succinct. For example: “If we incent the stakeholders to prioritize their todos so that our goals align with theirs”. In the right context, it’s meaningful. You could say, “If we provide benefits to everyone who has a stake in this in such a way that it’s to their advantage to rank the importance of their tasks so that we’re all working toward the same results” – but why is that better? (In fact, I like “incent” better than “incentivize” – first time I’ve heard that one.)
Also “single point of redundancy”, while funny on the surface, makes perfect sense, as does “maximize buy-in from the stakeholders”. Have you ever tried to complete an expensive and/or politically sensitive project that doesn’t have buy-in from powerful stakeholders, one that’s simply rubber-stamped, neglected, underfunded, understaffed? It’s practically impossible to make it happen. On the other hand, some projects don’t require much buy-in from the stakeholders – they can simply be completed and presented, or even completed and implemented in a way that’s totally “transparent to the user”.
I enjoy poking fun at jargon, but I also hear a lot of attacks on various types of jargon from folks who don’t operate within the spheres where it’s useful. (I assume you do work in an area where this kind of language is used, or you wouldn’t have come up with such a perfect, and funny, example of it.)
I say, long live jargon, lingo, slang, buzzwords, and argot! Bring it on!