When You Try To Sound Important You Sound Dumb

Many people in the business world have a disease. I like to call this disease Ego Ignorance. Ego Ignorance takes place when executives use nonsensical language to make themselves sound important - otherwise known as corporate buzzwords. I've create a list of top symptoms of this disease, so now if you see an ailed coworker, you can immediately send them to the instituion.


1) “Significant” Such as “Jones made a significant contribution to his team.”

What the heck does “significant” mean here? I use it all the time, but mainly, just to make the sentence seem more important. Significant is not a measurable amount. It’s just a fancy word for “big.” But if I write “big,” I will look like a fifth-grade graduate. Ugh.

2) “Cost-Savings” Such as "Landon created a spreadsheet process that produced cost-savings." In other words – Landon made a spreadsheet that saved the company money. But “cost-savings,” has a hyphen, and it’s a longer word, so we have to use that because apparently hyphens make the word more important.

3) “Critical” Otherwise known as IMPORTANT PEOPLE. But no, it’s “critical,” that we do not use the word “important,” because then, our competition will think we are not as cool as they are.

4) “Representment” Oh wait, that’s not even a word. You just made it up! Why do you stick to what you really mean which I think is “representation.” Apparently, marketing people don’t take English.

5) “Strategic efforts” Yeah, to apparently go nowhere if you keep using BS words like this.

6) “Utilize” The longer form of “use,” which means the exact same thing and is used in the exact same context. So use the shorter version big wig.

7) “Digitization” Omigosh. Seriously, you’re going to use this word? It’s a shame to Bill Gate’s empire.

And now for the kicker, I will use all words in a sentence, or two: Colleen created significant cost-savings through the digitization of critical methods. She utilized strategic efforts to display a represement of her outcomes so that everyone would be super amazed.

The end.