Business communication has become more of a science than an art in the last few decades. Gone are the days when Latin and classical Greek students discovered the art of communication as mastered by giants like Cicero and Plato. Instead, today we have an army of graduates in communication often employed in projecting an impressive image of themselves and the organisations they work for.
Most organisations consider marketing as one of their crucial management functions. The overload of communication material has become even worse in the last several years.
Social media is increasingly used to convey instant messages often wrapped in mellifluous language. But is the quality of business communication making it easier for the targeted audiences to buy into whatever message is being conveyed?
Every industry has its communication style, often peppered with marketing buzzwords, hype and jargon. The estate agency business has been the most dynamic to develop a kind of communication that makes it necessary for ordinary people to refer to a dictionary of estate agency terms that have a meaning beyond the apparent literal interpretation.
Every industry has its communication style. In social surveys, estate agents regularly feature high up on the list of 'least trusted professions'
In social surveys, estate agents regularly feature high up on the list of ‘least trusted professions’.
If you are searching for buying or renting a property, you must master the skill of seeing through the property descriptions crafted by estate agents to bamboozle readers with fake imagery.
So, let’s look at some classical estate agency terms and their real meaning. When you find the word “charming” in a property advert, you could safely conclude that the advertised property is likely to be “small, pokey or tiny”. A property that is described as having “original features” is likely to have no work whatsoever done on it since it was built in the early 1900s.
Today, it has become fashionable to entice property buyers by advertising a property as “ideal for investors”. The likely meaning of this term is that this is the kind of property you wouldn’t want to live in yourself, but some desperate renters will probably go for it.
Various companies that specialise in offering business communication services to their clients conduct an annual survey to determine the most annoying business jargon in any particular year.
TrustRadius is a trusted review site for business technology, serving both buyers and vendors. Their surveys identified some words that we often heard in business communication over the last two years.
According to those surveyed, the most annoying buzzword of 2021 was ‘new normal’. The ‘new normal’ refers to the state of the world and how we expect the world to be after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Business analysts, politicians and practically every organisation have become obsessed with this term, whose meaning is increasingly ambiguous.
‘Synergy’ was the top most annoying business buzzword in 2020. TrustRadius comments that ‘synergy’ has all the hallmarks of a piece of annoying business jargon, adding: “It sounds vaguely futuristic and means next to nothing.” Whoever used it first in business communication must have meant to describe how businesses work together for their mutual benefit. Today, the word is so recklessly bandied about that you need to research its meaning on Google to understand it.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines buzzwords as “words or expressions from a particular subject area that have become fashionable by being used a lot, especially on television and in newspapers”.
Words, such as 'synergy', are so recklessly bandied about that you need to research their meaning on Google to understand them
Business people and professionals need to be sure that they speak the right language to the right people at the right time. Crafting a well-written document often entails avoiding buzzwords, slang and acronyms that may be trendy but often obscure the meaning one wants to convey.
Some business communicators may believe that peppering their communications scripts with trendy buzzwords and jargon makes them look professional. The problem with buzzwords is that when business people use them, their audience hears them as tired and meaningless. Used in excess, they are a guarantee that an audience will stop listening.
You may think that business audiences like listening to the marketing pitch often embedded in your business communication. Instead, inside their brain, your message is just translating what you say as “blah, blah, blah”.
There is a distinct risk that many of us get trapped in slang and buzzword time warps. Unless you know a language stickler who keeps commenting on your communication style, you may be using hopelessly out-of-date buzzwords.
It may be worth investing in a good buzzword bible, like the Macmillan Dictionary, which has an ever-growing library offering definitions of every evolving buzzword.