Business Words that have Lost their Impact and an Invitation to Help Create Alternatives!

When my kids were little and learning to read and write at a more advanced stage (think upper elementary), their teachers would tell them not to use “lazy words.” For them, these were words they used a lot. The teachers were training them to be intentional about their words, not lazy.

I asked my college-age daughter if she remembered this. She did. She says that now, her professors call them “filler words.” She listed “very,” “really,” and “just” as a standard list. One of her professors has an adverse reaction to the word “things” as well.

Essentially, lazy or filler words are either unnecessary or so overused that they have lost their impact.

In the grown-up, adult-driven business world, we have these words too. If you Google “overused business phrases” or “business buzzwords,” you’ll see a vibrant collection of people who want us to stop using phrases like “low hanging fruit” and “let’s circle back.”

It’s essential to be aware of the business words that have lost their impact and be intentional about using the better words that help to communicate our intent more powerfully. Depending on what we are writing, we want our words to invoke either an emotional or intellectual response. Boring writing rarely has that effect.