“No matter where I’ve worked,” writes Molly Young in perhaps the greatest takedown of corporate-speak I’ve ever read, “it has always been obvious that if everyone agreed to use language in the way that it is normally used, which is to communicate, the workday would be two hours shorter.”
Only she prefers the term garbage language to corporate-speak or jargon or buzzwords, “because garbage is what we produce mindlessly in the course of our days and because it smells horrible and looks ugly and we don’t think about it except when we’re saying that it’s bad, as I am right now.”
It really is a devastating piece, and you really ought to read the entire thing. Especially for the closing statement.
