Going Forward anyone?

We’ve all been guilty of it haven’t we? A momentary lapse in commonsense that allows hollow corporate rhetoric such as “going forward” “at the end of the day” and ‘synergies” to crawl their way into our everyday language.

Sydney Morning Herald columnist, Paul Sheehan, has taken an angry swipe at our corporate jargon protagonists in today’s paper. It’s jam packed with many fine examples of linguistic vandalism and made me pause and reflect on one of my personal favouriates in the last five years; strawman. Apparently it’s got nothing to do with keeping crop eating birds away from your farms or the Wizard of Oz but puzzling description of the topics one must cover in their communications plan.

Paul’s article is well worth a read and reminds us that as trusted communications advisors we should be helping our customers (not clients) drag their messages out of the increasingly toxic sludge of meaningless language.

Comments

[David Koopmans]

Paul Sheehan (SMH( and Leon Gettler (The Age, both Fairfax Ltd) must swap notes. I wrote this post a few days ago in response to a Leon Gettler article:
http://www.mokummarketing.com/blog/2007/07/20/blah-blah-ginger-file-file-2-buzzword-balance-sheet/
Or do you think Paul reads my blog:)
I'll add you to my blog roll too, Chris.
Cheers,
David