Excerpted from The Buzzword Dictonary

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10 words or phrases
you should never put
in a memo or news release

1. Leading: Virtually every news release claims its company is the leading (put your company's specialty here) in the country. It's not believable anymore. Related words to leave out: Leading edge, bleeding edge, best in class, and Best of Breed (unless you're in the dog business).

2. Collaborative partnerships: Are we supposed to be amazed? Can you actually have a partnership that isn't collaborative?

3. Leveraging our assets: Any company that doesn't "leverage its assets" goes out of business. Everyone already assumes you do. Don't waste their time repeating it.

4. Mission critical: Your product may save us time, reduce errors, solve problems or increase profits, but unless lives are at stake, don't expect the vast majority of people to buy this hype.

5. Robust: It's a term that best describes coffee. Calling a product robust tells the customer little or nothing. Robustness, a new variation, is even worse. Try spelling out the benefits. It's more effective.

6. Ultimate experience: For most of us, the "ultimate experience" isn't something that you can put in a press release or publish in a newspaper, much less put in a memo to the boss.

7. Strategic alliances: Why would you have a business alliance that wasn't strategic?

8. Actionable: Everyone's tired of actionable steps, actionable results, actionable techniques, etc. Avoid the term unless you have to differentiate those items from the inactionable items you're promoting.

9. Web-enabled: If you have a Web site and take orders online, just say so. You wouldn't brag about being telephone-enabled or stapler-enabled, would you?

10. Space: As in "We're in the B2B space." Or B2C space, B2G space, etc.

© Copyright 2006, John N. Walston