You’ve had your say and decided ‘moving forwards’ is the winner of our ‘worst jargon’ poll.
The completely pointless phrase, which has been increasingly used in interviews in recent years, narrowly took the crown in what turned out to be a two horse race with the equally painful ‘synergy’.
More than 200 people voted and over 280 votes were cast in total and there were just two votes between the offending terms.
‘Moving forwards’ took 19 per cent of the vote, ‘synergy’ secured 18 per cent, while ‘holistic’ finished in third place.
The interest in the poll highlights how bored and frustrated people have become with these over used and often meaningless phrases.
Stop the spread of this vocabulary virus and replace these words and phrases with simpler and more meaningful expressions.
Moving forwards: The winner of our poll. A horrible phase which is seemingly adored by politicians and sports stars who seem compelled to utter it again and again. The only positive is that at least they are not going backwards. Sometimes it is uttered at the end of a sentence, in the same way a teenager uses ‘like’ as punctuation and on other occasions it is used instead of the much more preferable ‘in the future’ or ‘looking ahead’.
Synergy: The runner up. It is a word which has been run into the ground in recent years and is used as an elaborate way to describe the process of working together. ‘Collaboration’, ‘cooperation’ or ever simply ‘work together’ are much better.
Holistic: People seem to think that using this word makes them sound intelligent. Chances are you’re just making your messages impenetrable for much of the audience. ‘Comprehensive’ or ‘complete’ are much more straightforward terms.
Journey: This once harmless word finished just outside the top three and this shows how everything has been turned into a ‘journey’ recently. Whether it is an X-factor contestant tearfully moaning about how miserable their life was before their 15 minutes of fame, or a company looking at how customers use their website, the phrase has been totally abused. Unless you work in transport, where you are likely to take your customers on an actual journey from one destination to another, you simply do not need to use this word. ‘Experience’ is a much better option.
Stakeholder: This horribly overused term took fifth place and is one of the worst examples of management speak. Who are you actually talking about? Colleagues? Suppliers? Doctors and nurses? It is better to spell out who exactly you are speaking to.
Traction: Unless you are in farming, tyre manufacturing or the medical world you don’t need to be talking about traction. ‘Progress’, ‘growth’, ‘achievement’, and ‘momentum’ all better convey progress being made towards a desired goal.
Best practice: We know what you mean when you use this phrase, which scored just 4 per cent of the votes, but it is tired and over used. It is usually lined up with a number of other offenders whenever an interviewee is talking about their aims and objectives in their new job or an initiative. You often hear people say they are ‘sharing best practice’ – well they are hardly likely to be sharing worst practice. As always, give us a case study to explain what you are actually doing.
Solution: This did not score as highly as we had thought, finishing in joint last position alongside ‘robust’. Everyone offers a solution these days. When a dry cleaner offers ‘dry cleaning solutions’ and a vet offers ‘pet care solutions’ you know the phrase has become hopelessly over used. What’s wrong with selling ‘products’ or ‘services’?
Robust: This was a very useful word until a few years ago and then everyone started using it. From politicians to spokespeople and copywriters the term has been flogged to death. Everyone now has ‘robust plans in place’ and are keen to ensure us their ‘systems are robust’ and that they have ‘robust procedures’. Some even go as far as to talk about ‘robust solutions’. The public assumes you are not introducing weak and flaky plans, policies and procedures so there is no need for this adjective. Although it finished at the bottom of the poll we are pleased to see some progress is being made with this word as it has been included in the GOV.UK list of words to avoid.
Examples of jargon put forward by readers of the blog and our Twitter followers included ‘reach out’, ‘granularity’, ‘cascade’ and ‘service users’, which is seems, somewhat surprisingly, is used to describe patients in the NHS.
These are all great additions to the phrases included in our poll and again highlight the widespread use of language which infuriates journalists and causes audiences to switch-off.
And of course there are other annoying examples of jargon which have not been mentioned at all.
But the lesson from this is straightforward and is taken from our media training and presentation skills training.
Keep your language simple, ditching the jargon, so that a 10-year-old could understand what you are saying.
Media First are media and communications training specialists with over 30 years of experience. We have a team of trainers, each with decades of experience working as journalists, presenters, communications coaches and media trainers.
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