BRIEF: How One Wrong Word Can Ruin Your Message

Posted by Sarah Mitchell on 14 April 2010 | 12 Comments

Tags: marketing, copywriting, twitter, BRIEF

Do you know what the word “ideation” means? How about “subitise”? Until recently, I didn’t know what they meant and wasn’t even sure they were actual words. I have four dictionaries on my desk, two synonym finders and two thesauruses. I couldn’t find either word in any of the eight books.

Boy, do I feel stupid?
Just the opposite. My overwhelming feeling was irritation. Why? Because the writer, in both cases, was attempting to establish authority on their subject matter by using fancy pants words. I’m at a loss why people do this, especially when it comes to marketing documents. If you have a really big-brained person reading your document, they probably know at least as much as you do. If the reader isn’t quite so gifted - like me - the results are worse. 1) The reader will feel stupid and quietly go away or, 2) The reader will think you’re an idiot and possibly blab about it in a blog post. Either way, you haven’t gained the sort of influence you’re after.

What’s the big ideation?
A few well-placed tweets and appeals to the brainiacs in my network revealed the definitions. Subitise means, “to perceive the number of (a group of items) at a glance and without counting”. Ideation means “idea generation”. Both words are psychological terms and have no place in business communication. My query revealed more ridiculous words/phrases. My favourite was shared by @davidlmorris, “verbal facilitation” used in place of “talking”. Oh brother!

Take-Away
When writing marketing documents, express yourself in a simple, straightforward way. Using big words and flowery phrases doesn’t impress and, at worst, offends your reader. The idea is to communicate, not confuse.

What words have sent you looking in the dictionary lately?