Kill Jargon, Bring Your Writing Back to Life

Image by: tnarik

Every day, we’re out there promoting ourselves and our Brands in the digital realm. Facebook, email, Twitter, blog entries, every little bit of communication is a chance to shine. Each is also a chance to fall flat on our faces with heavy, corporate-speak jargon.

“We do offer our most sincere apologies. However, in reference to the matter referenced above, our current standpoint remains solid at this juncture” is notbetter than “Sorry, our position hasn’t changed.” Nor is “Fortunately, we will be unable to aquiece to your request in approximately one business day” better than “Good news! We can do that by tomorrow.” Actually, it’s sort of the opposite of better. By a long shot.

Sometimes a formal tone is appropriate, but don’t let your personality (and your message) get bogged down in jargon in an attempt to make your message seem more business-like, or important. It’s usually better to just come out and say what you have to say. Your audience will appreciate your candor, and you’ll get to skip coming up with a more formal-sounding word to replace “do.”

Check out the link below for more tips to keep your writing wicked good, and let us know your grammatical pet peeves in the comments.

 And don’t even get us started on “unnecessary quotation marks.”

5 Tricks for Wicked Good Writing