Certain words are creeping into your vocabulary…
First of all, can you name the musical from which the headline of this blog entry hails? Sorry to get fancy on you!
Now, to the topic at hand, for all of you language gurus out there (particularly those of you who are entrepreneurs), I have a question about words that constantly get rejected by spell check … but are words that are also constantly used in the parlance of entrepreneurship.
Two perfect examples:
"impactful"
"incentivize"
In usage, (combined for efficiency), it would go something like this:
"We were seeking a highly impactful way to incentivize our team to bring out the entrepreneur in each of them."
In our experience it’s been very effective to use these terms. But we get rejected by Word everytime we attempt to type them into a document.
What is an entrepreneur to do?
November 9th, 2005 at 1:33 am
Do you rebuckle your knickerbockers BELOW the knee?
Do you use the words from Captain Billy’s Whizbang? Words like" swell" and "so’s your old man?" and so my friends: Ya got trouble… right here in River City…with a Capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for: PETER PAN???
Meredith Wilson researched, developed, and loved to death his characters from The Music Man. He took a love of patriotism, Heartland people, warts and all: immigrants, arrogants, the mediocre, the gossips, ruthless salespeople, overly scrupulous salespeople, he added pool tables, a Barbershop quartet, a librarian, a kid with a lisp and the "e-bay of its time": The Wells Fargo Wagon! The only thing he left out of this musical was a dog (and I think they inserted one into the movie.) This musical brought him much fortune and acclaim.
If you listen to Harold Hill and his buddies, you can find great business advice: "BUT YOU GOTTA KNOW THE TERRITORY!"
Now, in response to your topic on words: Use a thesaurus and find the real word in common usage. It sounds like an illiterate lawyer when you hear made-up word forms. I’ve heard lawyers say "conversate" instead of simply "talk". Honest! I had a boss who tried to sound high-tech and we just laughed at his attempts, missing the contents of his edicts and memos in our amusement.
Most people respond to good simple language, whether you are an entrepreneur, politician, or a band leader (Cab Calloway is the exception) Rule of thumb: If you (or Word) gets stuck on the word, drop it and find something simpler.
"We were looking for a highly effective way to motivate our team (with incentives) to bring out the entrepreneur in each of them."
But if you are writing a musical, song, poem, or novel, play with the language all you want; you may be creating new word usage that will then be understood in the workplace. "There were birds in the sky, but I never saw them winging, no I never saw them at all till there was you."-Meredith Wilson, The Music Man
November 9th, 2005 at 10:09 am
J.G.,
doesn’t "P" stand for "Pool"?!
thanks for the fun comments….