Don’t misunderstimate the importance of vocabulary
“If you’re using complicated vocabulary and complex imagery, you’re going to lose people” – Seth Linder, Dukas PR
For some reason, American presidents spring to mind in respect of both good and bad uses of vocabulary – for every one of Ronald Reagan’s memorable ‘thousand points of light’, there’s a less memorable George Bush ‘misunderestimation’ lurking in the background.
George was quite fond of mashing up the English vocabulary – don’t follow in his footsteps.
1. Don’t use -ize to make a noun into a verb
I’m afraid that these are all ‘words’ that appear in one dictionary or other, but the more -ize’s you add, the less clear the meaning becomes.
- Solutionize
- Synergize
- Recontextualize
- Operationalize
- Smartsize
2. Don’t substitute new words to hide your ignorance of proper usage
Usually this happens when you ‘sort of know’ the word you want to use, and you’ve got away with it in conversation lots of times in the past….just that you’re not so sure when it comes to writing it down.
- Affect/Effect – remember, ‘affect’ is usually a verb, ‘effect’ a noun; e.g. “When our sales were affected by the ash cloud, it had an effect on our strategy”
- Precede / Proceed – ‘precede’ means to come before, whereas ‘proceed’ means to begin or continue; e.g. “The preceding announcement told me to proceed to the next window”
- Compliment/Complement – ‘compliment’ is to say something nice, ‘complement’ is to add to: e.g. “I would like to compliment on you on your recruit – now you have a full complement of staff”
3. Don’t just make words up
Having witnessed George Bush’s ‘misunderestimation’, don’t follow suit:
- Failportunity – portraying your failure as an opportunity, really?
- Irregardless – it’s regardless….regardless of the context.
- Expresso – nope, it’s an Italian word, espresso, if you’re going to use it properly
- Undoubtably – undoubtedly wrong
- Flustrated – frustrated or flustered, take your pick – but not both at the same time.
4. Keep it simple but memorable
“Aspiring managers would do well to remember that if you can’t express your idea without buzzwords, there may not be an idea there at all.” – Matthew Travis, Executive Search for Life Sciences.
Quite.
Don’t misunderstimate the importance of vocabulary.
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