Gosh I get bored reading the same words on everyone’s website and in everyone’s blogs.
Can’t we be a little bit more, um, you know, creative?
43 Words and Phrases Whose Time has Come…and GONE.
One of the things about being a thought leader is avoiding clichés. Here is a list of words and expressions that you might want to consider not using.
Thought leader
Align/misalign
To take something “to the next level” or “to a different level”
To go up or down “a notch”
To “reach out”
To “go missing”
Glom
Awesome (God is awesome, Mother Nature can be awesome, but that’s about it)
“You guys” (especially when addressing a woman older than, say, 50)
Deep dive
Scale, scalability
Optimize
Rad
Best practices
Skill set
Tool box/tool set (toolset is worse)
Way better, way more
Connect the dots
Hacks
Buzz
Robust
Brain dump
Leverage
Buy-in
Riff
Majorly (as an adverb)
Stakeholder
Drill down
Ahead of the curve
At the end of the day (Thank You to my author friend Jane V. Blanchard)
Crafting
Disruptive
Double down
Dude
Spend (as a noun)
Onboarding (as a verb)
Task (as a verb)
Impactful
Stoke (used in anything other than “I stoked the fire” context)
Score (used in anything other than a sports context)
Über
Rock, as in totally
Totally
The best writers don’t use clichés.
Liz Coursen, author
Self-Editing for Content Writers: The Style Guide for Everyone Writing Internet Content
Before You Even Open Your Mouth: The Writing Guide for Professional Speakers
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