Speak Simply to Impress

You know these people, you’ve been in meetings with these people, and heck, you may even be one of these people. I’m talking about the folks who read up on something, find a meaningless term or two and then use it to puff up themselves or what they do.

If you are one of those people, Heath Row dug up a neat little tool that will help you commit your crimes against the English language for Fast Company’s blog. It’s Leslie Lee’s Web Economy BS Generator. Use it well, and please refrain from attending my meetings.

To everyone else: Simplicity is elegant. Clearly expressing yourself is the best way to get your point across. Don’t utilize when you can use, don’t pontificate when you can think, and don’t ever say “transform distributed infrastructures” or “redefine integrated bandwidth” (phrases courtesy of Lee’s little app). I’d like to think that those in the working world are getting smarter, and what you say will be more important than how you say it. Alas, many workers are impressed by multisyllabic words, even if they don’t mean anything at all.

If you want to impress coworkers or potential employers with your speech, take the advice Greg Ragland, cofounder of Executive Vocabulary, offers in our article “What Your Words Say About You”:

"Some people use high-brow academic vocabulary words, where you have to almost build a sentence around the word. Then a lot of people give you a blank stare when you use it, and you have to explain what it means. That's not going to get you anywhere. You can be called out really easily if you use a word you're not comfortable using. You have to be really comfortable using a word and feel comfortable other people will understand it."

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