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It’s Frankenstein Friday—an event that celebrates the birth of the famous fictional character. I’m co-opting the holiday, which takes place annually the last Friday in October, to talk about my favorite kind of related monster, Frankenspeak.

As I define it, Frankenspeak is convoluted text that doesn’t sound like it was penned by a human, but instead sounds like it was created in a lab.

Sometimes, it reads like someone bolted on words to create a terrifying  string of nonsense (“our mission-critical, scalable, high-performance, unparalleled, game-changing solution”) or bloated bit of buzzwords (“We have assembled surgical and clinical expertise second to none, have a state-of-the-art trauma center, developed sophisticated minimally invasive techniques, and called on innovative training and technology to ensure the highest level of patient safety and quality of care,” as my friend David Meerman Scott wrote about recently.) Either way, it’s sales-y language and useless marketing hype.

In Content Rules, C.C. Chapman and I wrote about the words and phrases that we’d like to ban from marketing, sales, corporate communications, business schools, blogs and boardrooms. But since today is a day to celebrate the scary, here are 10 of the most frightening:

1. Impactful. Ugh. This is a truly scary word that many people in business and education like to toss around to describe things that make an impact. But the word does not appear in most dictionaries and, if it does, should be banished.  Instead try: “influential” or “substantial.” “Powerful” is good, too.

2. Leverage. This word is the poster child of words that began life as nouns and (perplexingly) find themselves used as verbs. Instead try: (depending on the intended meaning) “influence,” “exploit,” “enhance,” “rely on,” or just plain “use.”

3. Synergy. Also: Synergistic Synergism. Synergize. (And while we are on it, let’s add all most words that end in “-ize” too: “incentivize,” “productize,” “monetize,” “budgetize,” “utilize,” “socialize,” “operationalize,” and (wait for it!) “calenderize,” which I actually heard someone use the other day. And yes, she had a perfectly straight face. Instead try: finding a word that doesn’t sound like it was first uttered by the robot.

4. Revolutionary or Innovative. People often use these terms in business to describe things that really aren’t. Unless you just invented an escalator to Pluto, don’t use them.

5. Email blast. Businesses often use this phrase to describe an offer they’ve emailed to their subscriber list. The problem is that it suggests disrespect. Are you a spammer? Then you’ve “blasted.” Legitimate businesses mailing a legitimate offer to an opt-in subscriber list? Not so much. Instead try: How about “sent”?

6. Proactive. The opposite of “reactive.” I understand that businesses want to seem like they’re reacting to issues even before they occur. But I think this word just sounds pompous and should be avoided in business. Instead try: depending on the intended meaning, “foresee” or “anticipate.”

7. Solution. Another favorite. Business people often use this word to describe or product or service they can’t otherwise explain. What’s wrong with “product” or “service”?

8. Words that individually are harmless, but mashed together become horrid: Buy-in. Mission-critical. Dial-in. Best-of-breed. End-to-end. Value-add. Next-generation. Game-changing. Face-time. Push-back. Net-net. Win-win. And low-hanging (as it applies to “fruit” when you aren’t talking about an actual tree or orchard).

9. Ridiculous phrases. There are a kajillion of these corporate-speak silly phrases: Run it up the flagpole. Eat your own dogfood. Out of pocket. At the end of the day. Peel the onion. Peel the grape. Open the kimono. Open the kimono at the end of the day while you are peeling an onion.

10. Finally, here are two more I dislike: “Nazi” when applied to business concepts (as in “brand Nazi”) or “drinking the Kool-Aid” as applied to accepting ideas or concepts (sometimes, without understanding). Since these two phrases are rooted in unfortunate and regrettable events in history, using them seems offensive or (at the very least) in bad taste.

Some people find today very stimulating:

So what about you? What business words do you think we should celebrate today?

If you want to create content that doesn’t sound monstrous, join us for MarketingProfs U Content Marketing Crash Course. Instructors Nancy Duarte, Jason Falls, Joe Pulizzi, Jay Baer, Joe Chernov, Marcus Sheridan, Mack Collier, Ardath Albee, Erika Napolitano (and many more — including me!) will set you straight on how to create and share compelling content that will take your business to a whole new level. Seats are going fast; register here!

Tags: Content, Marketing