What’s your favourite business buzzword!

As a writer, I have a passion for words. I also enjoy networking. So, imagine for a moment that your favourite business networking organization (mine is The Business League) was run by management consultants, and that you all talked in management speak.

Instead of a business breakfast meeting you would have an “early morning enterprise-synergy bacon-and-egg scenario”. And the main advantage of having just one member per profession in each chapter or branch would be that “we marginalize our sector rivals to a point where they are almost nil as a potentially competitive market factor, which means that we can dominate, in a total way, all the marbles”.

Instead of finding ways of passing referrals and doing business with your fellow members you would “innovate front-end methodologies to empower inter-commercial deliverables and thereby maximize your mission-critical schema”.

However, if you are faced with this sort of mumbo-jumbo in your company literature, perhaps you ought to be employing an editor (like me!) to make sense of it all.

I’m sure that you’ve all got your favourite examples of management speak or business buzzwords. Perhaps you could share them with me and we could all have a good laugh! Just send me a comment listing them and I’ll collate all the ones that I receive. I look forward to reading your contributions in due course.

How Many English Words Do You Know?

Last Friday I took part in a game of ‘Call My Bluff’. For those readers who don’t know the rules, the object of the game is to guess the correct definition of an obscure word from the three or four different ones given to you by another team.

Although I work with words professionally on a daily basis, I was surprised to find that even I’d never heard of any of the words used in the game. Mind you, the English language is renowned for the richness of its vocabulary. The Oxford English Dictionary lists over 600,000 different words and their definitions, and technical or scientific terms can add millions more to the total. Altogether, there are about 200,000 English words in common use whereas an average well-read educated person can have a total vocabulary of between 15,000 to 20,000 words, and only use about 1,500 of them in a normal week. So it is not surprising that such words as ‘laroid’, ‘lagan’ or ‘xebec’ are totally unknown to most people.

What is particularly interesting is that, despite being rather complex to learn and difficult to master, English is probably the most widely spoken language in the world. Approximately 375 million people speak it as a first language and up to 1,400 million more speak it as a second language. English is the dominant international language in aviation, business, communications, diplomacy, entertainment and science and is an official language in 53 different countries. And what is even more interesting is that each of these countries has its own version of English. We all know about the differences between American (US) English and British English, but what about Australian English, New Zealand English, Canadian English, Caribbean English and South African English – all of which merit having their own specialized dictionary being published by the Oxford University Press. And then there is Indian English (the bain of all those British people who hate being put through to certain telephone call centres!), Malaysian English and Chinese English. Professor David Crystal, who specializes in linguistics, has claimed that if you combine native and non-native speakers, India now has more people who speak or understand English than any other country in the world. India is closely followed in this respect by the People’s Republic of China.

Coming closer to home, there is Scottish English, Welsh English and Irish English. Each region of England itself has its own dialect and even the Isle of Man and Guernsey have their own form of the language. So, you could say that there is no officially correct form of English – not even the ‘Queen’s English’ (after all, her family originally came from Germany and her husband is Greek!) – but this is probably the reason for its beauty, its flexibility and its attraction. Long may it continue!

Overheard in the Press (2)

For those of you who enjoy puns, here is another story, this time from Sandy Toksvig who related it in her column ‘Seven’ in the Sunday Telegraph last summer.

Two young men so enjoyed their fishing holiday beside a excellent trout brook that they made a vow to repeat the trip in twenty years’ time.

Two decades later they meet to try and find the nirvana of their youth. They search the woods, but for the life of them they cannot recall exactly where they had set up their tent all those years before. At last they reach a stream and one of the men shouts: ‘This is the place!’ ‘No, it’s not,’ says the other. ‘Yes, it is,’ says the first man, ‘I recognize the clover growing on the bank.’

The second man shakes his head and says, ‘Don’t be silly, you can’t tell a brook from its clover.’

Overheard in the Press

Some chess enthusiasts had booked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament successes.

After about an hour, the manager of the hotel came out of his office and asked them to leave.

‘But why?’ they asked, as they moved off.

‘Because’, the manager said, ‘I can’t stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer.’

(Spotted in Link, the journal of the National Association of Writers’ Groups (NAWG), edited by Mike Wilson, who loves this kind of wordplay and who is asking his readers for more of it. He is even offering to give a prize to the person who submits the best example.)

Ten Important Words You Should Use in Your Sales Letters

In a good sales letter or advertisement there are certain words that are sure to trigger a positive response from your readers. Therefore, you should try to incorporate at least some of these words into your sales literature.

The first of these words is “discover”. By using this word, you invite the reader to explore something new, which should arouse their curiosity to learn more about your product or service.

The next word to use is “easy”. If something is perceived to be complicated or difficult, people are likely to lose interest. So make it easy for your potential customers to respond to your sales literature and say so when you write to them.

Another important word to use is “guarantee”. People hate to do something that is risky, so put their mind to rest by telling them that what you are offering is risk free and is guaranteed to bring them satisfaction.

People also like to think that they are following a healthy lifestyle, so if what you are selling helps to improve or maintain a person’s physical or mental well-being, say so in your literature by emphasizing the “health” benefits of using your product or service.

There is a certain four-letter word that works extremely well in any sales letter or advertisement. That word is “love” and it can evoke some strong emotions in the reader – positive ones, that is! Use this word whenever possible.

“Money” is another word that should attract the reader. Everybody wants to make it, save it or have great value in return for it, so make sure that you offer these benefits when you write to potential or existing customers.

People love to try or buy something that is “new” because they assume that a new product is somehow better than an old one. So make sure that you mention that you are offering a “new” service or product, even if it is just a revamped version of an old one.

Another word to use is “proven”. This word suggests that your product is tried, tested and reliable, and that the customer can depend on it.

What every person wants from a product or service are “results”, so demonstrate that what you are selling will produce the results that the customer is looking for.

Finally, the most important and most powerful word of all is, ideally, the individual reader’s own name because that person will feel that you are addressing him or her personally. Also make sure that the words “you” and “your” are used liberally throughout your sales literature in order to reinforce that impression.

If you use these words in your sales literature, readers are more likely to respond to it and become your customers. Try them out, and see what happens!

Why You Should Never Depend on Your Computer’s Spell-checker

Every word-processor software program seems to have its own spell-checker and it is very tempting to rely on it to make sure that every word you’ve written is correctly spelt. However, there are several different reasons why you should never depend entirely on your computer’s spell-checker, as I will now explain.

To start with, spell-checkers are not very good when it comes to the use of English. Although a spell-checker can tell you whether a specific word has been misspelt, it can’t tell you whether you have used it correctly. For example, a spell-checker doesn’t understand the difference between ‘wed’ and ‘web’, ‘where’ and ‘were’ or ‘can’ and ‘ban’. And it doesn’t know if you’ve missed a word out entirely. Missing out the words ‘no’ or ‘not’ can totally change the meaning of a sentence. The same is true of punctuation. A few months ago, in Canada, a misplaced comma in a contract cost a communication company over two million dollars.

A spell-checker can’t tell you if a comma or a semi-colon is more appropriate in a sentence; and it doesn’t know where to use a colon. How often have you typed a comma when you meant to use a full stop? And how often have you used a spaced hyphen to introduce an explanation when a dash would have been more appropriate. Unfortunately, a spell-checker would not have helped you.

In English, some words can be correctly spelt in a number of different ways. For example, the word ‘co-operate’ can also be spelt ‘cooperate’. Whether you are writing a report or a brochure, whichever way you choose to spell this word, it is important that you spell it consistently that way throughout your document. The same applies to punctuation. For example, do you consistently separate items in a list with a comma or a semi-colon; do you always use either single quotation marks or double quotation marks? And what do you do about quotations within quotations? You can’t use your spell-checker to ensure consistency in these sort of things.

Are you sure that what you have written is unambiguous? You know what you mean to say but when you write it down it might not necessarily be all that clear to the reader; and your spell-checker certainly won’t know what you meant!

Finally, there are occasions when you might use a word that is frequently confused with a similar word that has a different meaning. A spell-checker can’t tell you which word you should have used, and this is another reason why you should never rely on it to find all the mistakes that might have crept into your written work.

So, if you can’t depend on your word-processor’s spell-checker, what can you do to make sure that your document is as perfect as possible?

Employ a professional proofreader

It is notoriously difficult to proofread or edit your own work. You have probably been drafting it for some time and in your own mind you know it better than anyone. The thought of another person altering so much as a comma may seem unbearable to you.

However, because you are so familiar with your work you could be blind to its flaws. It can be very difficult to put yourself in the place of the reader of your document. So it is best to use a second pair of eyes to review it before the final version is printed or published on the Web.

And be sure to use a professional proofreader or editor. That person will know from their training and experience how words are spelt and used, and when and where punctuation should be correctly placed. By delegating this task to such a specialist you can concentrate on what you do best!

Is This The ‘Right’ Way to Describe Copywriting?

The following piece of ‘copy’ has been passed around the Net for several years now, and I have adapted it in order to promote my business as a copywriter when I give short presentations to other business people. I would like to acknowledge the person who originally came up with this gem, whoever you are!

Copywriting is all about making as few words as possible work as hard as possible to promote your business.

So, when you write copy you have the right to copyright the copy that you write, if the copy is right. If, however, your copy is not right, you must rewrite your copy to get it right. If you write religious services, you write rites, and have the right to copyright the rites that you write.

Very conservative people would write right-wing copy, and have the right to copyright the right-wing copy that they write. A right-wing cleric, such as the Rev. Jim Wright, could write right-wing religious rites, and would have the right to copyright the right-wing rites he has the right to write.

Right!