important-sounding words or phrases (often associated with a particular field) that are usually of little meaning and are used primarily to impress the uninitiated
Each year, more people quit smoking on November 21 than on January 1. Last Thursday was probably no exception. It was the American Cancer Society's 20th Annual Great American Smokeout. This concept has worked so well that we decided to start an annual "outage" of our own:
Consider the dangers we all face from second-hand buzzwords and other jargon: groans, winks, rolling eyes, loss of concentration, boredom, confusion, and mediocrity. We should be able to choose a buzzword-free lifestyle, but we can't avoid such words. They're all around us--polluting our business letters, memos, and technical documents, radio and television, technical and business conferences and meetings, the World Wide Web, and even Dilbert.
It's a problem of epidemic proportions. Just look at the statistics: The search engine on the Lewis web (which finds every file on the Lewis web with at least one occurrence of the search word) brings up 669 "hits" for the words activities and activity. Altavista (which finds every occurrence of the search word) brings up 3,592,773 hits worldwide. Support, supports, supported, and supporting generate 1220 hits at Lewis and 8,412,208 hits worldwide. Provide, provides, provided, and providing total a whopping 1917 hits at Lewis and 6,517,064 hits worldwide. That's a lot of space for words that can usually be replaced with something more meaningful, or just deleted!
Perhaps the best way to "BuzzOut!" is to just stop using such words this December 4. But if that seems too extreme to you, you might want to try our 12-step program for cutting back:
Step 1: Admit that you have provided, performed, executed, conducted, and implemented. Now, try something different: Just do something.
Step 2: This week, instead of making contributions and providing support to activities and efforts, make it a point to simply help a specific area.
Step 3: Begin or start your next project instead of initiating or instituting it. This may be scary. Call someone in your BuzzOut! support group if you're afraid to start something or you feel the urge to initiate something.
Step 4: Each week, have your BuzzOut! support group pick a buzzword like value-added, long-term or enabling. Whenever someone in the group is caught saying or writing the chosen word, they must add a quarter to the BuzzOut! jar. At the end of the week, most groups should have enough in the jar to go out to lunch!
Step 5: Grow beans, tomatoes, herbs, dendrites, crystals, or flowers. Stop growing your organization, your company, your efforts, your program, and your coworkers.
Step 6: Tell someone in your BuzzOut! support group that you work in ________, not in the area of ________, and especially not in providing support in the area of ________.
Step 7: When you can't resist using a certain buzz word, like synergistically or utilize, look up its meaning to make sure that you're using it correctly. For those of you with more willpower, look up the word in Roget's Thesaurusor the NASA Thesaurus; then use one of its synonyms instead.
Step 8: If a word from step 7 has several different meanings or isn't in your dictionary, don't be afraid to do what President Clinton did with liberal--explain what it means to you.
Step 9: Suggest dropping element and function from the names of your project's subparts. Don't be surprised if other committee members rip this idea into confetti-size pieces as soon as they see it on the brainstorming chart or affinity diagram.
Step 10: Describe the effect or influence that suggested changes may have instead of detailing their potential impact.
Step 11: Stand out from the crowd. Instead of being involved in the process of developing an effort to improve something, just improve it. If you're not quite ready for that, then help improve it.
Step 12: Work together or collaborate with another person or group instead of being involved in a cooperative effort with them.
From time to time, we will feature one of these steps in our articles to help those of you having buzzword withdrawal. Don't give up. And remember, you're not alone.
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Last updated: 1/20/2009
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