Failure of the heart muscle
The English language has a huge and rich vocabulary, having absorbed words from so many other languages: Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Latin, Norman French, Yiddish, Anglo-Saxon, German ...
So why restrict ourselves to a small set of tired clichés that convey little if any meaning? Dozens of words have become worse than useless because business and government writers and speakers use them constantly and unthinkingly (or deliberately, to fudge their meaning). Here are a few of my pet hates.
Impact: When I was a willowy youth, a car accident, punch in the nose or cyclone had an impact. Today, anything abstract has an impact: a decision, a policy, an Act of Parliament. Even worse, ‘impact’ is now a verb as well as a noun: ‘Your stationary posture is impacting my ability to exit the building’. Aaarrgghh! Please help your audience stay awake by using a more specific term: effect or affect, influence, change, hurt, damage, weaken, diminish, strengthen. Or change the sentence completely: ‘Please move so I can get out’.
Issue (as a noun): An issue is a knotty question, a matter to be resolved, perhaps a controversy. But if you suffer from coronary heart disease, you have a health problem, not a health issue. Keep the distinction clear: do you have a difference of opinion with your neighbour? A bone to pick? A disagreement? Now you’re talking!
Inappropriate: This word conveys no subtlety or nuance. It is a wasted opportunity. Tell your reader why something is inappropriate. Is it illegal? Unethical? Annoying? Irritating? Too expensive? Insulting? Patronising?
Well, I could go on all day: passionate, optimal, committed, driver, enhance and key all irritate me. But the topic is more serious than my editorial tetchiness; jargon often hides reprehensible behaviour, letting the perpetrator avoid responsibility. Don Watson tells us in his excellent book Weasel Words that in the Soviet Union, for example, death from starvation and abuse in a slave camp was recorded by officials as ‘failure of the heart muscle’.
