Business Buzzword Warning: Proactive!

Today’s post is the first in a series of “business buzz words,” which I expect will be a fairly regular appearance on this blog, as there appears to be no end in sight for the business buzz words.

And, of course, the first business buzzword is proactive.

This is a pretty popular word to deride, so I suspect that I don’t have to say too much about it. Even Encarta starts off its entry: “When people name words they despise as jargon, proactive is often on the list.” And indeed, it's a word that people love to hate.

I'm going to try to avoid just jumping on the hatin' bandwagon. Instead, I’d like to add to this discussion my perspective on the marketing disadvantages of “proactive,” which I think are many.

(1) It is definitely a word that annoys a lot of people. Just the sight of it sets some people’s teeth on edge. Yes, they could be wrong, and they could be judging a word unfairly. But, still, if you know some of your readers are likely to feel that way about a word, why use it--especially if there is almost always a perfectly suitable replacement?

(2) It is overused to the point of meaninglessness. Proactive is a word that has been thrown around so much by so many different companies that it is almost absurd. Your few readers who don’t instinctively hate the word will pass over it without much thought because they’ve simply seen it way too much. It has become another false promise—a word marketing folks use because they think it sounds “cool” or “responsive,” but most readers recognize that it is just a marketing term, not an accurate description of a business process or a firm.

(3) You can almost always replace it with a better, more descriptive alternative that is much less likely to bore and/or annoy your readers and much more likely to surprise or interest them. The next time you catch someone using proactive, consider “assertive,” “active,” “dynamic,” or even “anticipatory,” though it’s not my favorite. It’s important to note that proactive almost always describes an action—either explicitly or implicitly. And it’s almost always better to show action than just describe it. So, rather than claiming that your firm has a proactive research team, you might instead write a sentence or two that shows what that research team does. For example, “Our research team monitors investment news closely and aggressively responds to…” rather than saying, “Our research team take a proactive approach to important market events.”

Be wary of synonyms for "because"

Tip: Rarely go searching for a synonym for "because." "As" is the most egregious violation I see.

Example: "We use third-party research as it provides the most information."
Fix: "We use third-party research because it provides the most information."

I thought I'd start simple. I find this problem much more frequently in business writers than in my college-level writing students. I suspect this is because business people get tired of using the same words too often, and let's face it: they like words and phrasings that make them "sound smarter." However, words and phrases that we think make us sound smart often produce obscure, convoluted sentences.

I'd like to emphasize this tip because I think causation is one of the most overlooked and underrated elements of writing, particularly on the sentence level. Readers like causation; they understand causation: "Because of A, then X." This is one of the simplest thoughts, and your writing should always embrace simplicity.

When you use words that readers don't automatically associate with causation (like "as"), your readers will likely miss the causation that you intended. At the very least, they'll probably miss it on the first go-round, and that means you're expecting them to go back and reread the confusing string of words you just wrote. As I tell my writing students, "Readers are stupid and lazy." Why should they go back to reread something? Instead, they will likely think that the writer can't write well or doesn't know what he or she wants to say. And they will use their few precious reading minutes to find something else.

The bottom line here is a good chestnut: don't worry so much about repeating words, particularly if that word is hard to replace effectively and/or that word is critical to the meaning of the sentence. ("Because" fits both of those categories.) Certainly don't go find a word that has at least 7 meanings, according to dictionary.com. You almost guarantee that your reader won't be able to determine which of those meanings you intend.

New blog...

I'm starting this blog primarily because many of my freelance clients over the years have commented that they would like to have a set of tips to fix common problems that I encounter in business writing. I've also thought that it might be useful for my writing students to see some very practical information about usage problems and how to fix them.

Let me just say that I certainly don't think I'm a seamless writer. But I do have a lot of editing experience and notice the same problems cropping up repeatedly. I thought that a blog could provide a nice forum for pointing out and discussing those problems.

I'm hoping to update this blog daily, Monday through Friday, during the college academic year.