Unnecessary Words

I just drafted a short research paper.  It went pretty quickly, about 2000 words in maybe 4 hours of actual work.  I’m not sure exactly how long it took as I was stuck on a slow train and kept getting distracted by birds and scenery along the wayside.  While working on the paper, I noticed a few words and phrases that I kept having to stop myself from using.  One of the major culprits was “utilize,” a word that is often used to add syllables to a sentence (because we all know that more syllables = smarter person) without a shred of care as to its actual meaning, which is something closer to “repurpose” than it is to “use,” at least according to the OED.  For example, “The cat utilized my denim-covered leg as a scratching post.”  (Of course, now when people want to say “repurpose,” they use the word “upcycle.”)  Many others have written about the increasing habit of writing "utilize" when "use" would work better.  I think that "utilize" may be a pet peeve of many fellow anti-jargonites because its misuse illustrates why we all hate jargon so much.  Much of the time, the person writing "utilize" isn't using it to convey the subtler shade of meaning between "use" and "repurpose" -- they just wanted to replace a simple word with a longer and more complex word that sounds "smarter" or "more technical."  This type of diction propagates the illusion that language that appears more complicated on the surface actually conveys deeper or more important thoughts.  And, it creates subtle shifts in the colloquial meaning of words, to the point where original meanings are lost on the majority of people.  I am well aware of the arguments that English is a living language, and daily usage is continually shifting the meaning of words, bringing new words into the vocabulary, and letting archaic words become extinct, and blah blah.  I'm OK with that in general principle, I just don't like change when it's driven by ignorance.  

"Your Call Is Very Important To Us"

This is low-hanging fruit, as far as doublespeak goes. The example is so obvious that I hesitated to post about it. Nevertheless, the blog is young, and this phrase exemplifies doublespeak.  In fact, if "Your Call Is Very Important To Us" had a picture, it would very likely be next to the word "doublespeak" in the dictionary.

If my call were Very Important to the organization I am phoning, I would not be kept on hold for 10+ minutes waiting to speak to a Customer Service Representative.  Rather, the company or office would have sufficient staff to answer their phones.  If calls were Very Important, the company would not do everything in its power to get me off the line with them and onto a website or a live chat or something of that nature. Calls are obviously not very important when you are forced into an interminable tree of options ("Para espanol, marque el nueve") that inevitably results in either the call being cut off or being dropped into a voice mail box that hasn't been checked in months.

An invaluable resource in combatting the voice mail menace is the site gethuman.com. They have a nice iphone app too.