Last Thursday, I wrote a post on crutch words, and more specifically, on the annoying overuse of the term “like”. Crutch words seemed to strike a chord with many of you. One reader wrote:
Please don't get me started...if I only had a nickel for every time someone used "amazing" or "awesome" over the past few years. AND THEY WON'T GO AWAY, no matter how meaningless their overuse makes them. Stunning.
Business Talk
I couldn’t agree more. “Like”, “amazing”, and “awesome” used to be words you’d only hear out of the mouths of teenagers. Not anymore. Now network news anchors and CEOs are guilty of the crime.
Why are our lions of media and industry sounding more and more like kids? Are they attempting to exhibit some kind of street cred? If so, they are failing miserably. They need to re-visit leadership books like “The Effective Executive” and “Management” by Peter Drucker. I’m pretty confident Mr. Drucker never counseled leaders to sound more youthful.
Sport Talk
In the world of sports, coaches and athletes apparently are given a handbook that serves as a guideline for press interviews. It consists of one verb: “execute”. It’s so overused and abused now that it has no meaning whatsoever.
Sports reporter: “Great game Athlete! How did you find a way to beat those guys? They’re a great team.”
Athlete: “You know, it all was because we were able to, you know, execute. The coaches, you know, put together a great game plan and, you know, we executed and, you know, pretty much did what we knew we could do.”
I’m convinced the handbook for play-by-play announcers and color analysts consists of one adjective: “great”. I suspect sports reporters and talk show hosts stole the handbook. Listen closely to the next broadcast and the post game interviews of any sport on the national and collegiate levels. I kid you not, you’ll hear a single football play described as follows:
“It was a great throw by the quarterback, but what really made it a great play was the great route run by the receiver and a great catch in the end zone.”
This caliber of commentary is probably true at the high school level, too, although I’m telling you more than I know since I don’t listen to high school sports broadcasts.
This is what our society is becoming as communicators. A lack of an expansive vocabulary is dumbing down our public discourse, literature, music, movies, new reporting and personal conversations. It’s a disturbing trend.
Presidential Talk
When I hear the President of the United States describe a meeting with the G8 Summit leaders as “awesome” and the hospitality shown by the host country as “amazing”, I’ll know doomsday is imminent.
Dumbed down, indeed. To your list I could add the overuse of the exclamation point and comma butchery. It's all gotten so bad, I almost never type "like" at all, but substitute "such as." And let's keep "execute" in the death chamber where it belongs.
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