How to Avoid Gobbledygook in Your Writing

photo by pink sherbet photography

David Meerman Scott and HubSpot have introduced a cool tool for evaluating written content for poor language choices: gobbledygook, jargon, cliches and overused hype words.

The Gobbledygook Grader scores your copy based on your use of these words and phrases and suggests how you might improve it. This is a great reality check on whether you’re communicating in a non-B.S.-filled manner.

Meerman just completed an extensive analysis of gobbledygook words and phrases in 711,123 press releases put out through the major online distribution channels (Business Wire, Marketwire, GlobeNewswire and PR Newswire). He used Dow Jones Insight, a media analysis service that I’m sure is far beyond my modest budget.

The top 25 gobbledygook words and phrases in 2008:

1. Innovate
2. Pleased to
3. Unique
4. Focused on
5. Leading Provider
6. Commitment
7. Partnership
8. New and improved
9. Leverage
10. 120 percent
11. Cost effective
12. Next generation
13. 110 percent
14. Flexible
15. World class
16. Robust
17. High performance
18. Scalability
19. Proud to
20. Optimize
21. Outcomes
22. In terms of
23. Value added
24. Easy to use
25. Metrics

I predict “monetize” will make the list sometime in the future. Repeat after me: “How I’m going to make money off this thing” is better than “How I’m going to monetize (fill in the blank).” And I was a little surprised not to see “state of the art” on the list. I still see plenty of people trying to slide that one into descriptions of the most mundane of offerings. Of course, who needs it when we’ve got “next generation” and “world class” to overuse?

I just might end up using the Gobbledygook Grader as frequently as Flesch-Kincaid. I used it on my F-K post and got a 71 out of 100 and zero gobbledygook words used. Hey, not bad!

For a comparison I ran this post, list and all. No surprises there … I got a -56.

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Tagged as: communication, david meerman scott, dow jones insight, flesch-kincaid, gobbledygook, gobbledygook grader, hubspot, jargon, writing