“Transparent, it turns out, has several shades of meanings…and has itself become a baggy-pants synonym of sorts for “the truth.”
- Joseph Epstein, American writer, in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal (27 Dec 2024)
“Inexact words,” Epstein calls these words, or “vogue words.” These words find their way into everything from those painful coach interviews during time outs of sports events to speeches penned by professional writers and telepromptered into my aching brain by talking heads who couldn’t swear under oath if they believe the words, let alone whether they could even summon them up without the teleprompter.
I love how Epstein phrases it earlier in the piece; “Words can glimmer, glow, dance, and sing, but they don’t always obey their users. Transparent is such a word” he writes.
He also states, “Ready acceptance of vogue words seem to some people the sign of an alert mind; to others, it stands for the herd instinct and the lack of individuality.”
Count me among the latter group. Our Clients deserve better than the vogue words of the day. They deserve clear statements of what we believe and why — whether to differentiate our offering, define their challenge, or describe the steps by which we’ll tackle their challenges with our offerings. They don’t deserve transparency, because we probably won’t work from the exact definition in the other person’s mind. (Translucent or truthful, for example…)
“At the end of the day, to be candid, transparency is the least we can offer,” some might say, combining vogue words and vogue statements into mind-numbing non-speak. Our response should be, “What about other times during the day? Are you usually not candid? Why would we ever consider putting the least we can offer in play?”
Cliches fall into the same category. The Minnesota Vikings quarterback played a masterful game against my beloved, 13-time World Champion Green Bay Packers late yesterday afternoon. (Cheater!) The pretty sideline reporter asked him, a very bright guy, the question, “How did you do it?” “Really just being in the moment, taking one game at a time and trusting the great guys in our locker room. Now we’ll enjoy this one for 24 hours and then it’s on to Detroit.”
(Insert eye roll, gagging sound, “Huh?” or “Really?” into the interview, if you’d like…maybe all at once!)
Words matter even when they don’t obey us. They can either cement our depth and bring gravity to the point we’re trying to make, or they can annoyingly say and mean nothing, simply tossed out to give the impression that we’re engaged. Since they matter, let’s consider them carefully and use our language to make the clearest statements possible, for the good of the whole ecosystem in which we work.
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