The Local Government Association recently issued a list of buzz-words that public bodies should avoid using when communicating with the public. This type of jargon is often hilarious and the LGA’s list does not disappoint with choice examples like “thought shower”, “wellderly” and “predictors of beaconicity”. It is scarcely believable that people use some of these phrases at all, let alone that the LGA should have to issue directives asking government bodies to avoid them.

A number of such phrases though are common to us all from politics and business-speak. They masquerade as inventive communication but ultimately provide only pointless abstraction and obfuscation. Unfortunately, despite often being redundant or meaningless, these phrases eventually enter the public lexicon - I’m sure we have all been guilty of “thinking outside the box”, “horizon scanning” or “going forward” at some point or other.

Following on from Julian’s BMJ blog on the topic last week, we thought it would be interesting to see which buzz-words you would most like to see the back of…

Great post! I would like to see these phrases 'gotten rid of'

Information Arbitrage, disengaged, bespoke and brain dump.

I quite like win-win it takes me back to my days as a games moderator!