I just came across an old post from David Meerman Scott, who developed with the help of Dow Jones Insight, the Gobbledygook Grader to eliminate those overused phrases from press releases that have become meaningless. You know what we are talking about–I blogged about some of them in an earlier post–innovative, robust, leading provider, next generation, new level, cost-effective and it goes on and on.
Meerman Scott analyzed some 700,000 public relations efforts: press releases in 2008 distributed by North American companies over the wires–PR Newswire, Marketwire, BusinessWire, etc. to find 375 “gobbledygook phrases.”
When you read the top 25 phrases, you’ll just want to throw up. But there’s help. You can run your release or for that matter other content, through his Gobbledygook Grader (created by Hubspot with Meerman Scott) and find out whether you need an intervention to stop using these words. I ran a couple of mine through and was comforted to know that I wasn’t doing too badly though some gobbledygook had crept into to my sentences. So let’s fight the good fight and speak plainly the way most normal folks do.
