Engel says, that while we accept some words from across The Pond, others are more irritating. For instance we use words such as lengthy, reliable, talented, influential, and tremendous without a second thought but they are all US imports.

As he says, “American usages no longer swim to our shores as single spies, as “reliable” and “talented” did. They come in battalions.” And it’s true that some really do grate on British ears!

Engels hates, “the sloppy loss of our own distinctive phraseology through sheer idleness, lack of self-awareness and our attitude of cultural cringe. We encourage the diversity offered by Welsh and Gaelic – even Cornish is making a comeback. But we are letting British English wither.” And I agree with him.

I like the fact that British English evolves – it adds to its richness. And like Engels, I do appreciate the ‘’vigour and vivacity” of some Americanisms. But I find others pointless. Why, for instance, do we need ‘expiration’? What’s wrong with ‘expiry’? And ‘burlarize’? It just sounds wrong. I also loathe the use of ‘event’ as in weather event.

I don’t think such words add any value; they just smack of change for change sake.

Here are some of Matthew Engel’s pet hates with his comments:

“Faze, as in “it doesn’t faze me”

Hospitalize, which really is a vile word

Wrench for spanner

Elevator for lift

Rookies for newcomers, who seem to have flown here via the sports pages.

Guy, less and less the centrepiece of the ancient British festival of 5 November – or, as it will soon be known, 11/5. Now someone of either gender.

And, starting to creep in, such horrors as ouster, the process of firing someone, and outage, meaning a power cut. I always read that as outrage.”

The News Magazine followed the article today with a list of 50 of our least favourite Americanisms

My pet hates, ‘expiration’ and ‘burglarize’ are there. As are ‘season’ rather than series when referring to a TV programme, ‘leverage’, and ‘heads up’.

Are your pet hates on the list?

I got tired of hearing, ‘well, we’re at the business end of the set now.’ Ugh. Not only is it plain ugly, but like all phrases that become over-used, it jars. You have to be very careful, in writing as well as in speech, about becoming reliant on certain distinctive words, phrases, and devices.

By devices I mean starting sentences with ‘And’ or using brackets for instance. Now, there’s nothing grammatically wrong with starting a sentence with ‘and’ or any other conjunction. I love it in fact because it creates emphasis. And for that very reason it needs to be used sparingly or it will lose its impact.

I bought a cookbook by a company whose copy I usually love. However I was really disappointed by the over-use of brackets on the introduction pages. I know that sounds horribly pedantic but I found it really distracting.

Last year I wrote a post on the misuse of quote marks after reading a book on productivity that had the same distracting effect on me. Ironically it was about how to be more productive by learning to avoid distractions.

It interrupted the flow as I had to stop every minute or so to read the framed word in a certain voice and with particular emphasis. I couldn’t continue with the book unfortunately, so I guess my production isn’t as good as it could be!

But we’ve arrived at the, ahem, business end of this post so what’s my point? Well, it’s just to be careful about over-use of anything in your writing, particularly if it’s a phrase or word that seems to be particularly popular at the moment.

Another example is referring to your place of work as something ‘Towers’. Innocent coined that one years ago and it worked really well for them. It was original and perfectly fit with their young, fun image. But for anyone else it looks like plagiarism or lack of imagination.

If you’ve heard or seen something used, even if you love it, my advice is to avoid it – especially if it’s as horrible as ‘business end’. Unless, of course you can use it in an original, surprising, ironic or clever way.

Businesses seem to think it makes them sound dynamic and professional. Well it doesn’t. It makes them seem dull, unimaginative, dated, and as a PR friend of mine suggested – ‘lazy-brained’.

The same friend actually spotted a van yesterday sporting the company name ‘Just Solutions’. Oh dear. Maybe it’s a tongue in cheek attempt to poke fun at the ridiculous and much maligned use of the word. Then again maybe not.

In what was obviously a solutions induced obsessive few minutes he sent me the link to the website of Moving Solutions – oh yes – a removal company.

I’m just as obsessed though. One of my favourite ways to tackle the boredom of the drive to Manchester from Surrey, is to spot the most laughable use of the word (I can’t even bring myself to write it for the moment) on the HGVs trundling up the motorway.

So what’s the alternative? I’d suggest it’s never a good idea to use it as part of a company name but how do you avoid using it in your copy? It depends on the context of course. I’ve seen people use it instead of ‘services’, when ‘services’ is exactly the right word to use.

My advice is always to be clear about what you’re telling your readers. Say it like it is. Don’t dress it up in words that you think make you sound smart, professional, and dynamic because chances are they’ll have the opposite effect. And of course you run the risk of confusing people or giving out the wrong message.

So if you’re a haulage company don’t claim to offer ‘logistics solutions’. If you provide IT services don’t shy away from that by offering ‘IT solutions’. And there’s nothing wrong with telling prospects that you can solve their problems rather than offer them ‘solutions’.

Phew. I feel better for that. Now it’s time for me to find a nutritional solution for my evening meal.

Thanks to Bill Hunt for suppling the solutions for this post.

Seeking a mid-weight copywriter

Our client, a well-established beauty retailer, is looking for a mid-weight copywriter…

Hello? I’m afraid mischief got the better of me and I emailed to ask if, at 6st 10Ibs, I was too lightweight to apply

Seriously – what’s in people’s heads sometimes? I have no idea what the term means but it suggests they are looking for someone average. But who is going to admit to mediocrity and why would a company activity seek it? Imagine the interview:

“Yeah, well, our marketing stuff is a bit of a waste of time really so there’s no point getting someone good in to write it.”

“Oh that’s great because while I’m not dreadful, I’m not really good either. And it just so happens, I’m looking for a company that takes pride in being mediocre. So when can I start?”

It could well be that in their world ‘mid-weight’ means something entirely different. But that’s the point – they need to think beyond their own little domain and be clear about what they want if they want their communication to be effective.

Unless you’re clear and say what you mean, don’t be surprised if you leave people baffled!

Hot on the heels of my post about straplines, here’s a BBC News online article speculating on the sound-bite Cameron will use to close the Tory conference.

As with straplines, a lot of thought and care has to go into political party soundbites. Yeah, I know. Hard to believe when you hear some of them. Some sound as though they’ve been scribbled on an expenses chit in the back of a limo, on the way back to that second home. Others reek of a slick advertising agency.

No matter how much effort goes into them, politicians’ sound-bites always end up sounding like empty rhetoric. Perhaps because that’s exactly what they are.

The BBC article makes a very good point about the influence of the internet and in particular, Twitter, on the length of future sound-bites. Twitter forces users to write their Tweet in 140 characters or fewer. A challenge indeed for verbose politicians.

Sound-bites and slogans have been getting shorter for the last few years. Compare Labour’s 1997 slogan – New Labour: Because Britain deserves better’ to the 2005 slogan ‘Forward, Not Back’. As the BBC report says, the latter makes the former sound ‘like an essay’. Both are equally empty as it turns out. And that’s the thing about slogans, political or corporate, the last thing you want is one that comes back and bites you on the bum at some future date.

I love the suggestions for a new Conservation slogan in the comments below the article. Why not have a go at making up your own? You never, know, you could see it up there in lights come the next election!

And the picture of Ryan Giggs? Sorry but I just couldn’t face having a picture of David Cameron on my website.

I’m not sure why local councils seem unable or unwilling to communicate clearly either internally or externally. They do seem to be among the worst offenders when it comes to the dark art of gibberish.

Maybe they think that using phrases like ‘coterminous, stakeholder engagement’ instead of simply ‘talking to people’ makes them sound, I don’t know, smart? Up-to-date? Credible? Cool even?

Well it doesn’t. Quite the opposite in fact.  It makes it sound as if they either have something to hide or as if they haven’t a clue what they are talking about.

I’m delighted to see that one of my particular bug-bears, ‘across the piece’, is on the banned list.  So too are several ‘cores’ as in value, principles and messages.  I always find it amusing that core is usually accompanied by a mammoth list as is the word key.

Take a look at the full, mind-boggling list .  Here are some that had me either shaking or scratching my head:

Cross-cutting – not what you may think.

Distorts spending priorities

Double devolution

Edge-fit

Flexibilities and Freedoms

Fulcrum – not sure what it means in local authority speak but I bet (deleted it) there is a simpler way of saying it.

Gateway review

Horizon scanning

Improvement levers

Innovative capacity

Menu of Options

Normalising

Place shaping

Predictors of Beaconicity

Promulgate – could be said so much clearer.

Rebaselining

Seedbed

Self-aggrandizement

Single conversations

Worklessness

Do you know your cross-cutting from your top-downing?

Take this BBC quiz to find out how fluent you are in gibberish.

Those of us of a certain age will remember the muddle that pesky duo Janet and John got us into.Yet John Wells, who is also Emeritus Professor of Phonetics at University College London, thinks that the ‘burden’ of peculiar English spellings is ‘holding back children’. He claims text message spelling is “the way forward for English”.  And he’s not alone.

According to a report in The Times a few months ago some educationalists think teaching spelling is elitist and discriminatory. Oh for goodness sake. Sometimes we just go too far with the old PC lark.

As the Times article’s author Mick Hume points out, isn’t this  a bit patronising? It implies children aren’t capable of learning how to spell and use English correctly. Not a very encouraging or positive message to send out to them.

Mick Hume goes on to say: ‘if we want to understand one another we need universal rules for what different words mean,  and this is often made clear through their spelling.’

Punctuation helps your reader make sense of what you’ve written. If they understand your message then half your job is done. It’s the apostrophe that seems to cause people more problems then any other punctuation mark. Trust me: it’s really not that difficult.  Click here for some tips on how to use it.

Don’t forget my old favourite – that Royal Mail customer survey.  It looks like our customers aren’t ‘held back ‘by the ‘burden’ of the English language.

According to the survey results, bad spelling and grammar could be costing UK businesses up to £41 billion in lost sales.   Apparently more than 70% of customers wouldn’t trust businesses with poor communication skills.

So there you have it Mr John Wells, your ‘progressive’ ideas could have costly results.