Please Stop Using Words That Make No Sense. I Am Begging You.

Is it just me or do we have a large number of people who struggle to verbally express themselves? Like, you know?

Language matters. Words matter. The way we express ourselves matter. The national debate over "family" and "marriage" has been deeply impacted by re-defining of words as have a host of other issues.

The poor use of verbal language is rampant in our culture and is highlighted by the overuse of buzzwords. Almost every area of life has them. Even we Catholics have our own set of buzzwords. But, the two areas of modern life which have the most annoying buzzwords, in my opinion, are young people and the business world. Young people use "like", "you know", "lol", etc. But, the worst culprits are the folks in business. For instance, do you understand the following?

"You should meet this guy with the SIO. He's sort of this kind of social entrepreneur thinking outside of the box in the sustainability space and working on these ideas around sort of web-based social media, and he's in a round two capital raise in the VP space with the people at SVNP."

If not, then you are a normal human being who has trouble with business buzz-words. They drive me nuts and according to this article, I am not alone. A snip:

I'd say that in about half of my business conversations, I have almost no idea what other people are saying to me. The language of internet business models has made the problem even worse. When I was younger, if I didn't understand what people were saying, I thought I was stupid. Now I realize that if it's to people's benefit that I understand them but I don't, then they're the ones who are stupid.

There are at least five strains of this epidemic.

Abstractionitis
We have forgotten how to use the real names of real things. Like doorknobs. Instead, people talk about the idea of doorknobs, without actually using the word "doorknob." So a new idea for a doorknob becomes "an innovation in residential access." Expose yourself repeatedly to the extrapolation of this practice to things more complicated than a doorknob and you really just need to carry Excedrin around with you all day.
Continue Reading.

If you think his article is a bit of a stretch, then you must either be an undergrad or have a job that doesn't expose you to such verbal mish-mash. Below is an example, though I doubt you will make it through the entire video (and that is perfectly normal):

I am certain there are many of you that can relate to this silliness. If so, then I have the perfect video for you:

Because I have been thinking about the abuse of the English language, due to the article above, I feel compelled to post one of my favorite videos on the importance of expressing yourself: