Language | Copy Unlimited blog

The trouble with euphemisms

Say what you mean and you can’t go wrong

The trouble with euphemisms | marketing language copywriting | copywriter Next time you’re having a shower, pick up the shampoo bottle and have a look at the ingredients.

If you’re anywhere in Europe, you’ll probably see aqua right at the top of the list.

If you can read the ingredients, that is – what with all that aqua pouring into your eyes as you squint at the plastic bottle.

That’s right. The main ingredient of your shampoo is water.

So why not just call it water?

Because Council Directive 93/35/EEC of 14 June 1993, together with Decision 96/335/EC, amended by Commission Decision 2006/257/EC (still awake?) says you can’t call water water.

You have to call it aqua. Milk isn’t milk, it’s lac. Beeswax is cera alba, and fish extract is pisces.

In an effort to make sure that everybody across the EU has a common language when it comes to cosmetic ingredients, the bureaucrats have ensured that nobody understands anything.

Unless they have a smattering of Latin, that is.

A rose by any other name

Have you got issues? It seems everybody has these days. Nobody has problems anymore. They all just magically disappeared, the day issues came on the scene.

Recently, I had a problem with an automatic payment to one of the giants of the online world. So I phoned their call centre.

What was the problem, I wondered? They told me that they had an issue with some direct debits. So the problem wasn’t on my side? No, the issue was on their side. And when would the problem be fixed? Well, they told me, we’re looking into the issue.

And in the meantime, I wondered, how could we get round the problem? Well we could deal with the issue by deleting the payment details and resubmitting them.

But wouldn’t I encounter the same problem? No, they said, it would almost certainly solve the issue.

It was like a staring match. But neither of us blinked.

It’s a spade. You know what to do.

The trouble with euphemisms is that they soon take on the stigma of the word they replace. So when people say issue, we hear problem. When they say challenge, we hear problem. When they say concern, we hear problem.

The solution? Call a spade a spade. And a problem a problem.

It’s reverse psychology that’ll give you the edge. If everbody else is trying to hide, disguise or massage the truth, and you just go ahead and say it, you’ll come out on top.

And that’s the best place to be.

Find out more:

Paula Vergara has a great post on ‘Bizspeak’ – Euphemisms: What Happened to Using Plain English?
The Oxford Guide to Plain English will help you say it like you mean it.
If you really have time on your hands, you can check out all those fascinating European Union directives.

Big business makes big mistakes

And the bigger they are…

Big business makes big mistakes | writing philosophy marketing language ideas education | copywriter It’s that time of year again: Christmas is a distant memory, you can’t shed those extra pounds and the credit card bills are rolling in.

Luckily, there’s always someone else with bigger problems. And Fortune magazine has assembled the 101 Dumbest Moments in Business to cheer you up.

It’s a romp through the lows (some of them very low indeed) of last year.

In case you haven’t got time to check out all 101, here are my personal favourites:

(10) Diebold, who put a picture of the key for their electronic voting machines on their website – just enough detail for somebody to cut a real one.
(15) Bindeez, an Australian toy made from beads. When sucked, the beads released the date-rape drug GHB.
(16) Microsoft, whose PR agency compiled a 13-page dossier on a journalist – then emailed it to him by mistake.
(38) The 409 people who clicked on a Google Adwords ad that said ‘Drive-By Download. Is your PC virus-free? Get it infected here.’
(48) The European Union, whose campaign to promote European cinema, Let’s come together, raised (at least) an eyebrow.
(50) The US Defense Department, and the case of the $969,000 postage stamp.
(51) Apple, who slipped up on customer service – with a nine-year-old iPod fan.
(67) McDonald’s, who took on the Oxford English Dictionary over the word ‘McJob’.
(81) Data-centre operator 365 Main, who set the bar high – then fell at the first hurdle.
(93) British Airways, who put the body of dead economy passenger in the seat next to a sleeping first-class one – and told him to ‘get over it’ when he woke up and complained.
(97) Blogger, whose own company blog was flagged as spam and promptly disabled.

There. You’re feeling better already, aren’t you?

I know I am.

Fresh, crisp and appetising – but not for long

… or why language has a sell-by date too

Fresh, crisp and appetising – but not for long | language copywriting | copywriter Remember the first time you heard the phrase ‘think outside the box’? Or ‘blue-sky thinking’? Or ‘paradigm shift’?

Once, they were new and exotic. Like words in a foreign language, it was fun to try them out – to use them in emails, to put them in proposals, even to utter them nonchalantly in a meeting.

You could sit back and watch the smiles of recognition or frowns of puzzlement spread round the boardroom table, like ripples in a pond.

Freshly minted language makes us look at the world differently.

Sometimes, we just take an expression and put it in a new context. So athletes have a track record, but companies have an enviable track record. Cars that were self-starters no longer required a crank handle; neither do self-starter candidates, a recruiter’s dream.

Computers were able to handle more than one job at a time, and soon, multi-tasking became something people did too. Assuming, of course, they had the bandwidth.

Passion was once confined to the bedroom. Nowadays, you’re as likely to find it in the boardroom.

Sometimes, we tweak a familiar expression to give it a new twist. So a ‘gimme pig’ is someone who wants it all, and ‘state of the ark’ is hopelessly outdated.

And then, something changes. Coming from nowhere, these words are soon everywhere. They no longer have the stamp of exclusivity, the cachet or originality. Like a joke that everyone’s heard, they’re not funny anymore.

And that’s when to stop using them. But we don’t. And so our readers and listeners simply blank them out.

If you’re ‘passionate about technology’ or want to ‘drive results’ or are ‘committed’ to just about anything, it’s time to get out the red pen and start again.

Be new, be original and be different. And you’ll be noticed.

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