Thirty words and phrases you need to stop using today

There's plenty more where this comes from. I've got another 70 at least, so this will just be the first in a series of posts. Leave your suggestions in the comments or tweet them under #wordsthatshouldbebanned. Click on hyperlinked words for fuller coverage on goodcopybadcopy. In no particular order . . .

1. Bandwidth

Please don’t tell me you don’t have the “bandwidth” to take on a project. I’ll just assume you mean you don’t have the mental capacity to do it. And I’m probably right.

2. Impact

Admit it, you use this word because you’re too lazy to learn the difference between “affect” and “effect”, don’t you?

3. Downsizing

A euphemism for “you’re being sacked” that’s now so commonly used it’s barely considered a euphemism any more.

4. Rightsizing

A euphemism for “downsizing”. Euphemisms for euphemisms are the linguistic equivalent of financial derivatives – designed to distance their users from the risk and responsibility attached to engaging in nefarious activities. That’s possibly why I mostly used to hear it from financial types when they were describing the benefits of the latest mega-merger they were working on. Unfortunately for them, said financial types have now mostly been rightsized themselves. Shame that.

5. Outsourcing

I’ve only just got over the shock of learning I’m about to be rightsized. And now you tell me you want me to train my cheaper replacement before I go?

6. Performance-managed out

You see, that’s the problem with euphemisms: no one is taken in by them. Everyone knows that your head of operations was sacked because he was crap at his job – they worked with him for gawd’s sake. Telling people he was “performance-managed out” just insults everyone’s intelligence.

7. Leverage

Ah, cute. You work in the HR department of an investment bank and you think that adopting the language of the revenue-generating (“losing”? – Ed.) boys in the front office will give you some cred in the organisation? I hate to break it to you, but while you’re still talking about “leveraging talent” and “leveraging diversity”, they all started deleveraging, ooh, slightly before that infamous Cramer rant started doing the rounds on the internet. Which kinda makes you look slightly less informed than Joe Kennedy’s shoe shine boy, doesn’t it? And that’s a shame, because “deleveraging talent” sounds like it could be quite a nice euphemism for “rightsizing”, something I’m guessing you’re doing quite a lot of these days.

8. Solutions

You know it sounds stupid, but you just can’t help using it can you?

9. Ideate

I’d never heard this word until I discovered it quite recently on the website for a consultant specialising in “talent development strategies”. Apparently it means “to imagine, to conceive, to form ideas”. Now, I have a PhD from the University of Cambridge, which by definition required me to do some original thinking. Yet somehow I never at any point in that PhD-writing process felt the need to use the word “ideate”. Is “how to be nice to your employees” really that much more of a complex topic than enigmatic diction in the Old English poem Exodus? (Actually, the same website talked about “integrative frameworks”, “aligned philosophies” and “opportunities to recalibrate”, so perhaps it is).

10. Passion

For God’s sake, get a room, won’t you? Some of us are trying to work in here.

11. Annual leave

My heart always sinks when I read this inhuman bit of corpspeak in someone’s out-of-office reply. You are allowed to have a holiday from time to time, you know. I won’t think any the worse of you if you tell me you’re sunning yourself on a beach in Tenerife for two weeks because your nightmare boss and mind-numbingly dull job have left you completely strung out.

12. Interface

You plan to build stronger relationships with your customers by “interfacing” with them more regularly, huh? Hmm, perhaps people would take to you more if, instead of interfacing with them, you actually talked to them for once?

13. Going forward

Used in the workplace to mean “from now on” or “in future”. Whenever I hear it I suspect the speaker of trying not to sound like they're whingeing (when in fact they clearly are). For example, if someone emails you to say “Going forward, please cc me on all correspondence regarding this project” (for they’ll always prefer the word “regarding” to “about”), you know that what they really mean is “I’m sick of not being included in things and am totally paranoid that you’re deliberately leaving me out”.

14. Human resources

In my parents’ day, the Human Resources department was called “Personnel”, which is ironically much more human than “Human Resources”. C’mon guys, why not go the whole way and call yourselves “the Department of Expendable Assets”?

15. Human capital

Smarter HR types, having wised up to the offensiveness of the term “Human Resources”, have rebranded the field as “Human Capital”. Hmm. Still kinda implies that you see me as a figure on a balance sheet, doesn’t it? An asset to be used, shifted around or disposed of as required. What, you mean I am? Oh, okay then.

16. Transformation

Employees are scared of change. But with four times as many syllables and a host of related pompous adjectives (transformal, transformative, transformational), “transformation” sounds much more upbeat and dynamic than change. Which is good, because that means most employees won’t notice that the transformation involves them being outsourced (or so you hope).

17. Engagement

Go on, admit it. When you talk about wanting to “engage me”, what you really mean is “market to me”.

18. Takeaways

A word that is fine to use if you’re describing highly calorific treats consumed in lieu of a home-cooked meal because that meeting dragged on until 8pm. It’s not fine to use in reference to a handout or an idea presented to you in said meeting. Like many corporate words, it’s particularly offensive when preceded by the word “key”.

19. Competency

“Competence” is used by literate people to describe one’s ability to do something well. “Competency”, often found in its plural form “competencies”, was invented by HR people to describe some specific aspect of one’s competence that is only required in the workplace, and which only they really get. Incidentally, you’d think the antonym of “competency” would be “incompetency” but, strangely, this has never caught on in HR departments, who instead prefer to refer to your incompetencies as “development areas”.

20. Silo

Fine to use if you’re a farmer with a large store of grain. Please don’t use it if you work in an investment bank – particularly if you have a tendency to turn nouns into verbs, such as “all our departments are very siloed”.

21. Escalate

Wars escalate, arguments escalate, problems escalate. But you can’t escalate something to someone else without offending those of us who took the trouble to learn the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs. Sorry.

22. Advise

You’re pleased to advise me that you’ll be attending tomorrow’s meeting, are you? Don’t you think it’s just a little self-aggrandising to label "telling someone something" as “advice”?

23. Revert

Please don’t tell me you’ll “revert by COB” when I email you. I’ll only end up reverting to type (ranty, slightly obnoxious wordsmith, in case you were wondering).

24. Challenge

The fact that your sales are down 54% on the quarter isn’t a challenge – it’s a problem. Recognise it as such.

25. Guerrilla

Do you think Che Guevara ever informed the media of his imminent arrival? I ask because the moment I knew “guerrilla” was completely overused was when it appeared in a press release announcing – get this – “a guerrilla exhibition of designer flower arrangements”. (Yikes, insurrection among the peonies! An insurgency of tulips! The carnations are revolting!)

26. Pop-up

Currently favoured by trendy designer types who’ve realised that “guerrilla” is, like, SO nineties. A word that’s fine to use when describing those annoying ads that interrupt you when you’re surfing the web. It’s not fine to when referring to those equally annoying temporary shops/galleries/theatres etc that appear in vacant shops thanks to a bunch of brainless art students.

27. Space

No one cool goes to galleries any more – they’re all experiencing “art spaces”. And theatres are just soooo boring compared with a “performance space”. And what? You dine in the kitchen? How old hat! Our home boasts a contemporary “eating space”, dontcha know. (Actually, “eating space” is probably just the least negative way of describing the modern kitchen, which seems to be just a cooker in your living room. Back in the day such a feature was the preserve of the bedsit. Today it’s a sign you’re living in a "luxury designer executive apartment").

28. Strategy

Right, we’ve strategised our strategy for strategic delivery. Can we actually get down to doing some work now, please? Oh, and by the way, saying it “stradegy” doesn’t imbue you with mid-Atlantic dynamism – it makes you sound like the office joke.

29. Framework

An essential part of any “stradegy”. Particularly favoured by bureaucratic types who think it’s impressive to spend time planning rather than doing.

30. Foodie

You’ll only ever hear the words “I’m such a foodie!” uttered (sorry, brayed) faux-apologetically by middle-class English people boasting about having good taste. My knowledge of Italian is limited, but I’m fairly sure that that nation of natural food-lovers doesn’t have an equivalent word for “foodie”. That’s because, unlike the English, the Italians don’t eat merely to feel superior.

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