This is me pinging you
Am I old and cranky? What? Just because the things people say and the way they say them gets on my nerves?
People are just making up words or taking real words but using them in weird ways that neither Merriam nor Webster nor even Roget would ever condone.
OK, I like to fancy myself something of a word guy. Not a fancy word guy but a decent, solid guy who cares about spelling and grammar and such.
My search history gives me away. I recently Googled “first come, first served.” I had to know if any hyphens were required. And I’m not ashamed.
I’m no word genius. I need help to try to get things right, but I feel like I at least make the effort. Not like some of the word outlaws out there who just say or write whatever they want and make me feel uncool because I don’t get it.
There are a lot of good words out there, even great ones. They do a fine job conveying our intended messages. Some of these words have been around a long time and deserve our respect.
But some people think these words just aren’t good enough anymore so they’re replacing them with other words — words that feel like they sound smart but, if you think about it, are just odd.
I believe these people call themselves “thought leaders” on LinkedIn. If you know any thought leaders, unfollow them immediately.
Let’s face it, the office is the worst place ever for this craziness with our language. I don’t know when office jargon started but it’s never stopped, and it might be getting worse.
It seems like a long time ago that “reached out” went from jarring to commonplace. Today, everyone reaches out. We don’t call anymore. We don’t write or email. We don’t contact. We reach out.
“What did Rodriguez say about the esplanade project?”
“I reached out to her last week but haven’t heard back.” “Oh. OK.”
No. Not OK.
I sent an email this week and got one of those automatic outof-office replies. It didn’t say “thanks for emailing me” (which I clearly did) but “thanks for reaching out to me” (which I clearly did not).
And speaking of “out of office,” did you know it’s now a thing to shorten “out of office” to OOO. So, when you get a message saying, “I’ll be OOO on Friday,” you now know what OOO is and you don’t have to do what I did and ask, “Hey, what’s OOO mean?” and then feel like a nerd for not knowing.
Reaching out is old news anyway. It’s been replaced by an even more annoying term. Ping.
Yep. Now if you contact someone by email, I guess you “pinged” that person.
OK, here’s another one. Someone was talking to me about a project. It was a team effort that involved the sharing of information among a small group of collaborators. For example, Person A drafts something, I review it and provide input then share it with someone else who would review my input and provide some of their own.
This was described to me by Person A as she would “download” the info to me and I, in turn, would “download” it to the next person.
Nope. Just, nope.
How about “bandwidth?” That’s another weird way to say something simple and I’m hearing it more and more. We used to have “time” to take on work or projects. Now we have bandwidth.
What are some words and expressions that make you cringe? If you have the bandwidth, reach out to me and let me know.
Chuck Brown can be reached at brown.chuck@gmail.com.