Say What?! Business Jargon
Ever review an e-mail chock-full of business-y terms and think, “Wait, what does this say?” Go ahead. Admit it. Translating your industry’s or company’s lingo into plain English every single day can be exhausting, especially if you had to explain it to someone unfamiliar with the territory. We asked around to get a feel for how others in the business community feel about the language used in e-mails, boardrooms and phone conversations day in and day out. The responses ranged from the light-hearted mocking to the downright incensed frustration. Ashley Backus, Designer Director, LPK Trends, admits to being fluent in “corporate-ese,” but not without poking fun at a few of her favorite words and phrases that she loves to hate. Unnecessary Acronyms For example, one of Backus’ biggest pet peeves is the use of unnecessary acronyms, like EOD (end of day), WIP (work in progress) and POA (plan of attack). “Just say the words!” Backus jokes. “It’s really only saving you two or three syllables!” Nouning A Forbes Magazine online article exploring the popularity (and lunacy) of business jargon lambasted the casual conversion of nouns into “wannabe” verbs. For example, in order to avoid the commonly confused “affect” versus “effect” grammatical error, people have begun to use “impact” as a verb. “We will impact our competitors sales with this new product,” is a cheap and ultimately incorrect method of avoiding a mix-up. According to Backus, some verbs are simply misused and abused: “Let’s chat that” is commonly heard instead of “Let’s discuss that.” Fake words Ah, yes. The maddening little red squiggly line that Microsoft Word stubbornly litters across your reports – a reminder that the words you toss around with your colleagues every day are not, in fact, words at all. Do “synergize,” “learnings,” “takeaways” and “aspirational” ring a bell? “Up talking”: I’m Ron Burgundy? [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmDgl-Y-kiU&feature=related[/youtube] Will Ferrell’s idiot character in Anchorman had audiences giggling when he took a simple statement and inflected the end of the sentence like a question. But Backus, and plenty of others in the corporate world, have noticed that “uptalking” is all over the corporate lingo. As Ferrell’s spoof shows, it can be a little hard to take someone with an uptalking habit seriously. So, how about you? Why don’t you circle the wagons and touch base with your resources. Tee it up and utilize your team’s bandwidth. Then, we can all re-loop and chat some real business jargon favorites.
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