How To Eliminate Meaningless Words From Your Emails
Written by Jerry Weissman
Our modern language has experienced a slow creep of meaningless words and phrases—both written and spoken—that not only fail to express ideas clearly, but also impede communication because they become extra words that readers and listeners must slog through while processing the meaningful ones.
One of the most common occurrences of meaningless words and phrases is in business where, due to the daily time and workload pressures, writers allow meaningless words to permeate their emails. So, in recognition of National Email Week, this blog will show you what they are and how to eliminate them. As a bonus, you’ll also learn how to eliminate meaningless words from your presentations.
Below you’ll read a collection of meaningless words and phrases—drawn from diverse sources—each with a definition of their problem, and then how you can purge them from your emails, documents, and presentations.
The first list is from a Wall Street Journal article, in which Greg Opelka, a musical-theater composer-lyricist, lists what he calls “verbal tics.”
- Like: A filler word from teenage years.
- You know: A condescension to the reader or listener.
- I mean: A tepid attempt to validate oneself.
- Sort of: A diminution of one’s own words.
- Yadda yadda: An indication of laziness.
The second list comes from the faculty of Lake Superior State University which releases an annual list of words that they say deserve to be “banished” from our vocabularies because of “misuse.” Their most recent list includes:
- Amazing: An overstatement.
- Does that make sense?: Another diminution of one’s own words.
- Irregardless: Not an actual word.
- It is what it is: Logic with no conclusion.
- Inflection point: Overused.
A third and final list is a unique form of meaningless words: clichés—words and phrases that are all guilty of the same problem, excessive overuse. In an opinion essay in the New York Times, author Michael Massing compiled a daunting list of 229 clichés, and is clearly spot on. Please note that Massing ends with an ellipsis, meaning that the list goes on.
In a previous blog, you read about wordsmithing, a reviewing and editing process that helps to choose the best words to convey the meaning of your message. There is also an alternate form of wordsmithing that helps to eliminate words that detract from your message. Wordsmithing your emails and documents is relatively easy to do. Before sending, reread your text, find the excessive words and phrases or clichés and hit delete.
But meaningless words in spoken situations, particularly presentations, are more of a challenge because they occur in real time. You can control them by deploying the final three steps of the wordsmith process from the prior blog:
- Practice. Speak your presentation aloud two or three times, record the last.
- Review. Playback the recording. Listen for any of the words or phrases above and flag them.
- Practice again. In this run through, drop the meaningless words.
To deliver your message effectively, don’t force your reader or audience to process meaningless words, let them focus only on the words that count.