Word up

I read a speech by a retired US legal journalist named Tommy Fernandez in which he enumerates the top ten things he hates about PR people. As a dilettante flack myself, I found him and his speech extremely annoying. Anyway, somewhere in his speech he said something about how PR people throw “conniptions” over deadlines.

Conniptions.

Conniptions is an ugly word. It reads ugly and it sounds ugly. And it makes me think of 5am puke-fests after drinking tequila. In fact, I find it annoying enough to want to throw conniptions of my own on Tommy Fernandez’s ass.

Made me think of words I hate. Here are some of them:

Strategic – Flacks looooove this word. It’s right up there with “retainer.” No meeting, no brainstorm session, no communication plan, is complete without this word. Good thing I don’t keep a gun handy else the next time I hear anyone use that word again I would be compelled to shove it in my mouth and let rip.

Team – This word became dirty when corporate folks co-opted it. It’s especially grating when used with “player” as in “team player.” Aaaaarrrgh!

Proactive – The equally hateful sibling of “team player.”

Robust – Once had a colleague who was unnaturally attached to this word—a robust communication plan, a robust relationship with the press. I always felt mildly homicidal whenever he said it. Even as I maintained an impassive face during presentations, I would fantasize about bitch-slapping him to Kingdom Come whenever I heard him say robust “Stop. (bitch-slap) Saying. (bitch-slap) That. (bitch-slap) WORD! (bitch-slap)”

Reliable – Especially when used to describe computer hardware. Years ago I did an AVP for a computer company in which I had to write “reliable” about a million times into the script. To this day I could never read the word “reliable” without hearing the voice talent in my head, “blah-blah…scalable…blah-blah…and...RE-LAAYA-BÜHL!”

Why can’t people communicate normally using simple language? It’s not just the corporate and technology types who are guilty of verbage. Once received a brief from an international NGO that read like this: Provide technical support and monitor existing media activities organized by implementing partners in relevance of technical information and mobilization of community (review scripts, advise channel and relevance of messages, technical advise and supervise in organizing pre-events and actual shows etc).

ANO DAW?!