A fresh approach

Office jargon

(From BBC website)

50 office-speak phrases you love to hate 

 

Management speak - don't you just hate it? Emphatically yes, judging by readers' responses to BBC writer Lucy Kellaway's campaign against offcie jargon. Here, we list 50 of the best worst examples.
1. "When I worked for Verizon, I found the phrase going forward to be more sinister than annoying. When used by my boss - sorry, "team leader" - it was understood to mean that the topic of conversation was at an end and not be discussed again."
Nima Nassefat, Vancouver, Canada
2. "My employers (top half of FTSE 100) recently informed staff that we are no longer allowed to use the phrase brain storm because it might have negative connotations associated with fits. We must now take idea showers. I think that says it all really."
Anonymous, England
3. At my old company (a US multinational), anyone involved with a particular product was encouraged to be a product evangelist. And software users these days, so we hear, want to be platform atheists so that their computers will run programs from any manufacturer."
Philip Lattimore, Thailand
4. "Incentivise is the one that does it for me."
Karl Thomas, Perth, Scotland
5. "My favourite which I hear from the managers at the bank I work for is let's touch base about that offline. I think it means have a private chat but I am still not sure."
Gemma, Wolverhampton, England
6. "Have you ever heard the term loop back which means go back to an associate and deal with them?"
Scott Reed, Lakeland, Florida, US

7-8. "We used to collect the jargon used in a list and award the person with the most at the end of the year. The winner was a client manager with the classic you can't turn a tanker around with a speed boat change. What? Second was we need a holistic, cradle-to-grave approach, whatever that is."
Turner, Manchester

9. "Until recently I had to suffer working for a manager who used phrases such as the idiotic I've got you in my radar in her speech, letters and e-mails. Once, when I mentioned problems with the phone system, she screamed 'NO! You don't have problems, you have challenges'. At which point I almost lost the will to live."
Stephen Gradwick, Liverpool
10. "You can add challenge to the list. Problems are no longer considered problems, they have morphed into challenges."
Irene MacIntyre, Courtenay, B
11. "Business speak even supersedes itself and does so with silliness, the shorthand for quick win is now low hanging fruit."
Paul, Formby, UK
12. "And looking under the bonnet."
Eve Russell, Edinburgh
13-14. "The business-speak that I abhor is pre-prepare and forward planning. Is there any other kind of preparedness or planning?"
Edward Creswick, Exeter
15-16. "The one that really gets me is pre-plan - there is no such thing. Either you plan or you don't. The new one which has got my goat is conversate, widely used to describe a conversation. I just wish people could learn to 'think outside the box' although when they put us in cubes what do they expect?"
Malcolm, Houston
17. "I work in one of those humble call centres for a bank. Apparently, what we're doing at the moment is sprinkling our magic along the way. It's a call centre, not Hogwarts."
Caroline Garlick, Ayrshire
18. "A pet hate is the utterly pointless expression in this space. So instead of the perfectly adequate 'how can I help?' it's 'how can I help in this space?' Or the classic I heard on Friday, 'How can we help our customers in this space going forward?' I think I may have caught this expression at source, as I've yet to hear it said outside my own working environment. So I'm on a personal crusade to stamp it out before it starts infecting other City institutions. Wish me luck in this space."
Colin, London
19. "The one phrase that inspires a rage in me is from the get-go."
Andy, Herts
20. "'Going forward' is only half the phrase that gets up my nose - all politicians seem to use the phrase go forward together. 'We must... we shall... let us now... go forward together'. It gives me a terrible mental image of the whole country linking arms and goose-stepping in unison, with the politicians out in front doing a straight-armed salute. Is it just me?"
Frances Smith, Toronto, Canada
21. "I am a financial journalist and am on a mission to remove words and phrases such as 360-degree thinking from existence."
Richard, London
22. "The latest that's stuck in my head is we are still optimistic things will feed through the sales and delivery pipeline (ie: we actually haven't sold anything to anyone yet but maybe we will one day)."
Alexander, Southampton
23. "I worked in PR for many years and often heard the most ludicrous phrases uttered by CEOs and marketing managers. One of the best was, we'd better not let the grass grow too long on this one. To this day it still echoes in my ears and I giggle to myself whenever I think about it. I can't help but think insecure business people use such phrases to cover up their inability for proper articulation."
Leon Reilly, Ealing, London
24. "Need to get all my ducks in a row now - before the five-year-olds wake up."
Mark Dixon, Bridgend
25. "Australians have started to use auspice as a verb. Instead of saying, 'under the auspices of...', some people now say things like, it was auspiced by..."
Martin Pooley, Marrickville, Australia
26. "My favourite: we've got our fingers down the throat of the organisation of that nodule. Translation = Er, no, WE sorted out the problems to cover your backside."
Theo de Bray, Kettering, UK
27. "The health service in Wales is filled with managers who use this type of language as a substitute for original thought. At meetings we play health-speak bingo; counting the key words lightens the tedium of meetings - including, most recently, my door is open on this issue. What does that mean?"
Edwin Pottle, Llandudno
28-29. "The business phrase I find most irritating is close of play, which is only slightly worse than actioning something."
Ellie, London
30. "Here in the US we have the cringe-worthy and also in addition. Then there's the ever-eloquent 'where are we at?' So far, I haven't noticed the UK's at the end of the day prefacing much over here; thank heavens for small mercies."
Eithne B, Chicago, US
31. "The expression that drives me nuts is 110%, usually said to express passion/commitment/support by people who are not very good at maths. This has created something of a cliche-inflation, where people are now saying 120%, 200%, or if you are really REALLY committed, 500%. I remember once the then-chancellor Gordon Brown saying he was 101% behind Tony Blair, to which people reacted 'What? Only 101?'"
Ricardo Molina, London, UK
32. "My least favourite business-speak term is not enough bandwidth. When an employee used this term to refuse an additional assignment, I realised I was completely 'out of the loop'."
April, Berkeley, US

33. "I once had a boss who said, 'You can't have your cake and eat it, so you have to step up to the plate and face the music.' It was in that moment I knew I had to resign before somebody got badly hurt by a pencil."
Tim, Durban
34. "Capture your colleagues - make sure everyone attends that risk management workshop (compulsory common sense training for idiots)."
Anglowelsh, UK
35-37. "We too used to have daily paradigm shifts, now we have stakeholders who must come to the party or be left out, or whatever."
Barry Hicks, Cape Town, RSA
38. "I have taken to playing buzzword bingo when in meetings. It certainly makes it more entertaining when I am feeding it back (or should that be cascading) at work."
Ian Everett, Bolton
39. "In my work environment it's all cascading at the moment. What they really mean is to communicate or disseminate information, usually downwards. What they don't seem to appreciate is that it sounds like we're being wee'd on. Which we usually are."
LMD, London
40. "At a large media company where I once worked, the head of human resources - itself a weaselly neologism for personnel - told us that she would be cascading down new information to staff. What she meant was she was going to send them a memo. It was one of the reasons I resigned - that, and the fact that the chief exec persisted on referring to the company as a really cool train set."
Andrew, London
41. "Working for an American corporation, this year's favourite word seems to be granularity, meaning detail. As in 'down to that level of granularity'."
Chris Daniel, Anaco, Venezuela

42. "On the wall of our office we have a large signed certificate, signed by all the senior management team, in which they solemnly promise to leverage their talents, display and inspire 'unyielding integrity', and lots of other pretentious buzz-phrases like that. Clueless, the lot of them."
Chris K, Cheltenham UK
43. "After a reduction in workforce, my university department sent this notice out to confused campus customers: 'Thank you for your note. We are assessing and mitigating immediate impacts, and developing a high-level overview to help frame the conversation with our customers and key stakeholders. We intend to start that process within the week. In the meantime, please continue to raise specific concerns or questions about projects with my office via the Transition Support Center..."
Charles R, Seattle, Washington, US
44. "I was told I'd be living the values from now on by my employers at a conference the other week. Here's some modern language for them - meh. A shame as I strongly believe in much of what my employers aim to do. I refuse to adopt the voluntary sectors' client title of 'service user'. How is someone who won't so much as open the door to me using my service? Another case of using four syllables where one would do."
Upscaled Blue-Sky thinker, Cardiff
45. "Business talk 2.0 is maddening, meaningless, patronising and I despise it."
Doug, London
46. "Lately I've come across the strategic staircase. What on earth is this? I'll tell you; it's office speak for a bit of a plan for the future. It's not moving on but moving up. How strategic can a staircase really be? A lot I suppose, if you want to get to the top without climbing over all your colleagues."
Peter Walters, Cheadle Hulme, UK
47. "When a stock market is down why must we be told it is in negative territory?"
Phil Linehan, Mexico City, Mexico
48. "The particular phrase I love to hate is drill down, which handily can be used either as an adverb/verb combo or as a compound noun, ie: 'the next level drill-down', sometimes even in the same sentence - a nice bit of multi-tasking."
B, London
49. "Thanks for the impactful article; I especially appreciated the level of granularity. A high altitude view often misses the siloed thinking typical of most businesses. Absent any scheme for incentivitising clear speech, however, I'm afraid we're stuck with biz-speak."
Timothy Denton, New York
50. "It wouldn't do the pinstripers any harm to crack a smile and say what they really felt once in a while instead of trotting out such clinical platitudes. Of course a group of them may need to workshop it first: Wouldn't want to wrongside the demographic."
Trick Cyclist, Tripoli, Libya

Guarrdian style tips

If the queen is the Queen, why is the pope not the Pope? And other questions

Q&A The Guardian style guide editors answer readers' queries – first in a series

T

he first in an occasional series of Mind Your Language blogposts attempting to answer some of them.

Big Society or big society?
Simon Hoggart rightly described this phrase as "surely the vaguest slogan ever coined by a political leader. Nobody knows what it means." Until they do, keep it in quotation marks, at least the first time you mention it in a story, and always lowercase – so it's "big society".

So it's "tea party" then?
If you're talking about cucumber sandwiches, scones and a pot of Earl Grey. If, however, you are referring to the Tea Party movement, use initial caps. The reference is, of course, to the Boston Tea Party of 1773, which did involve tea (though not sandwiches and scones).

Due to or owing to?
If you can substitute "caused by", due to is correct; if you can substitute "because of", owing to is correct: The train's late arrival was due to leaves on the line; the train was late owing to leaves on the line. This rule is so simple that it is astonishing how rarely people (including those who write in the Guardian) get it right.


..... and more

True size of Africa

Comic Sans

What's so wrong with Comic Sans?

Comic Sans, that unassuming jaunty typeface lurking inside millions of computers, has become the target of an online hate campaign. Simon Garfield explains why normally mild-mannered people are so enraged by its use.

Why are new biz people so bloody awful?

Loved this rant from Carl Hopkins aka Uncle Carl in Drum [http://thedrum.co.uk/blogs/carlhopkins/2010/09/22/q-why-are-new-biz-people-so-bloody-awful/?utm_source=Interspire&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Drum+England+Newsletter+-+Fri+24+Sept+2010:]

Q. Why are new biz people so bloody awful?

I have always had a nightmare every time I have appointed a so called new business development manager. To be brutal most of them have been bloody awful. They show very little imagination and all they seem to do is send endless letters and emails to clients and they seldom get results. What have you found to be the best business development tools over the years and would you advise hiring another so called business development expert?

I have said this before but obviously you were not listening so here we go again. The best New Business person in your agency is…drum roll… you. No one understands the capabilities of your business and its people better than you; no one knows the collective experience of your business better than you. No one has more chances of getting to see a prospect or a client of a competitor than the owner of the agency, that’s you. No one can listen to a client’s issues and reply in a manner that is believable and deliverable better than, you.

I am not saying other people cannot fulfil this role and have some success but no one can do it better than, you – are you getting the message? And if they can, I would suggest they would start their own business – which they do. There are many New Business ‘administrators’ out there; people who understand your strategies and can manage those strategies with you and for you but it’s not conversion! This is what they all do on arriving at your agency as big-dick-new-biz-bod: they say you need a new agency website and that you need a new email/DM campaign – all eats into your already overstretched creative department. They end up posting out balloons or fruit cakes or some other random idea – littered all over reception for days on end. They write half-hearted, badly targeted letters to anyone who ever spent a pound in an agency like yours – because you and your copywriters are far too busy. They ask for new magazines and expensive subscriptions and then write to every client they read who has just announced a pitch – it’s too late by then numb nuts. They suggest you join any agency register available and that you start advertising – more time and money and the creative end results divide the agency. Then they piss off to any two bit networking event or spend thousands on stands at exhibitions where you are surrounded by other totally inappropriate suppliers for days watching old ladies and students collecting stress toys emblazoned with phone numbers and taking all your glossy brochures which your creative teams have spent hours of time producing…oh and they will probably suggest you enter more awards and hire a PR agency….and a facebook site…and a twitter page.

Truth is the top new business people are safely hidden in agencies and you cannot get them or they run their own agencies. You need to drive your own strategy with some of the tactics I’ve mentioned and hire yourself someone on about £18k with a brain to help you out and not on £80k with a large ego and expense account. Remember this one fact: ‘new business people’ are great in first meetings; its what they do – hence they are good in interviews. It doesn’t mean they will ever win an account one their arse hits your faux leather executive ergonomically designed chair.

Missing words

Secret vault of words
One for the wordsmiths…A graphic design student doing a project for Kingston University, London, recently discovered a vault of words which have never made it into the dictionary. The vault is owned by Oxford University Press.
Examples of ‘words’ from the vault include

Furgle – to feel in a pocket or bag for a small object such as a coin or key
Nonversation – a worthless conversation, wherein nothing is explained or otherwise elaborated upon
Lexpionage – the sleuthing of words and phrases
Optotoxical – a look that could kill, normally from a parent or spouse
Polkadodge – the dance that occurs when two people attempt to pass each other but move in the same direction
After researching hundreds of the words, Luke Ngakane, 22, chose 39 to etch onto a metal press plate and print onto A4 paper for his graphic design degree.
Fiona McPherson, senior editor of the Oxford English Dictionary's new words group, said the words are not rejects and they may well be printed in the future.
She said: ''They are words which we haven't yet put in. I don't like calling them reject words because we will revisit them at some point and they may well go in.
''They are not yet considered suitable for the dictionary because there's not enough evidence that people are using them.”