Here's a quick way to understand business jargon

If you are a person who cares about language and who possesses an adequate sense of humor, this website is for you.

"Unsuck It" is a place to explore the ways in which “professional” communication in English goes wrong and replaces any jargon and buzzword with simple language.

This website tries to tackle, in a funny way, the process that makes the English language sometimes ugly and inaccurate, other than difficult to understand. 

A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.

- George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

Source: Unsuck It

Financial Lingo..for fun!

Financial lingo can also be funny sometimes!

A sample from The Wall Street Journal:"Some Financial Lingo Redefined":

• Federal Reserve: Extremely powerful, like God, and also moves in strange and mysterious ways.


• Commodities: Pigs with lipstick.


• Lottery tickets: Buying opportunity for folks who feel they don't pay enough state taxes.


• Car lease: Chance to pretend you are wealthy, while getting poorer with every monthly payment.


• Credit cards: Another chance.

Read more on: WSJ.com

Digital Nomads

Definition: The ever-expanding group of workers using wireless technology to eliminate the need for an office.

Usage: Scoreboard for 2009: Cyber Luddites 1.0; Digital Nomads 1.0 x 10100

Source: Entrepreneur

Mancession

Definition: The current recession, which has hurt men more than women.

Usage: In the Great Mancession of '09, 80 percent of jobs lost were held by men, and unemployment rates neared postwar records. No change in percentage of household chores completed.

Source: Entrepreneur

See also:

She-covery

Womenomics

Ganjapreneur

Definition: Someone who smells opportunity in the medical marijuana industry.

Usage: About 25,000 ganjapreneurs and their customers attended the inaugural THC Expo in downtown Los Angeles last summer.

Source: Entrepreneur

Ramen Profitable

Definition: A business that makes just enough money to cover basic living expenses, such as toilet paper, running water and instant ramen.

Usage: "Of course we're profitable," Marc snapped. Lydia took in the unwashed plastic utensils and stained papers on the scuffed table that doubled as his office. "Yeah," she agreed, "ramen profitable."

Source: Entrepreneur

Osmosis Marketing

Definition: The idea that any brand's image -- and resulting success -- is achieved more effectively through the osmosis of pervasive blog buzz and tweet-trending than traditional marketing methods.

Usage: Robbie wished, not for the first time, that osmosis marketing hadn't worked so spectacularly for Justin Bieber's empire

source: Entrepreneur

New! Neologisms of the week

TWITTERING: The fanciful language creations associated with the online Twitter system

Busted: has modified oil rig, or just plain rig. A database search of coverage of the BP spill finds the first recorded use of busted came nine days into the crisis on April 29, when the MSNBC host Ed Schultz said, “The busted rig is leaking — get this — 200,000 gallons of oil a day.”

Chunking: In recent decades, the study of language acquisition and instruction has increasingly focused on “chunking”: how children learn language not so much on a word-by-word basis but in larger “lexical chunks” or meaningful strings of words that are committed to memory

Cracking the jargon: how to interpret five sentences commonly used by stock market experts

MAMIL: Middle-Aged Men In Lycra, taking up cycling with enthusiasm, in the process spending freely on high-end cycles and all the accoutrements, especially the clothing.

MPs told to mind their language

By Sean Curran

Parliamentary Correspondent, BBC News

Could the expenses scandal turn out to be good news for the English language?

A group of MPs has been having a bit of end-of-term fun by talking about the sort of language used by politicians and civil servants.
To help their plain English party go with a swing they invited along some star witnesses: Matthew Parris from The Times, The Guardian's political sketch-writer Simon Hoggart and Professor David Crystal, a linguistics expert from Bangor University.

Everyone agreed that a lot of political speeches are gobbledygook, full of words and phrases like "stakeholder", "multi-agency", "level playing field", "outsourcing" and "blue-sky thinking".
I could go on but that's part of the problem. Politicians do go on and on and on, inventing more and more gibberish.

David Crystal pointed out: "politicians could not be accused of lying if nobody understood what they had said".

'Delivery's out, implementation'a in': The civil servant's essential guide to Davespeak

By Mail On Sunday

If you want to make it in the new Government, you need to know the lingo. So civil servants have produced a guide to ‘speaking Cameron’ to help its employees adjust to life under the Coalition. The briefing note, drafted by officials in Michael Gove’s Education Department – but expected to be emulated across Whitehall departments – is headlined ‘language of the new Government’. The memo – drawn up for the benefit of outside agencies hired to work for the department – is divided into two columns: words used before May 11 (the day Mr Cameron entered No 10) and those which should be adopted instead. The first word which the memo says should be dropped is ‘State’. The officials write that it should be substituted for Mr Cameron’s cherished concept of the Big Society, his idea that power should be taken away from Government and handed back to communities. The concept, which is thought to have been driven by Mr Cameron’s long-term image guru Steve Hilton, can be felt throughout the list: civil servants should not talk about ‘leading change’ but about ‘empowering change’, it says. The 30 key ‘translations’ include several mentions of families, another key part of the PM’s ‘brand’. More...Shire wars: Cameron risks new 'Turnip Taliban' rebellion with secret plan to drive out old-style constituency chairmen. The guide says that the emphasis is no longer on England being ‘the best place in the world to grow up’, but should be on Britain being ‘the most family-friendly place in Europe’. The list, which is subject to the caveat that it ‘depends on the context the words are used in’, spells the end for much of the jargon which sprang up during New Labour’s 13 years in power. ‘Stakeholder’, meaning someone with an interest in a policy, has been abolished, to be replaced with ‘people, volunteers, practitioners, professional organisations etc’, while ‘delivery model’ has been axed in favour of ‘getting things done’. The term ‘integrated working’ has been replaced by the more verbose, but comprehensible, ‘people working together to provide better services’. Last night, a Government spokesman said the guide was a natural consequence of the change of regime. ‘All new governments have new policies, which they communicate to the public with fresh language and tone,’ said the spokesman. ‘It will come as no surprise that we’ve been working on this.’

Jargon, Buzzwords and other Bad Biz Writing

By Ilya Leybovich

Here we look at the worst examples of office-speak, along with some words that deserve a place in our professional vocabulary. Not all corporate buzzwords are without their usefulness.
Everyone has encountered business jargon at one time or another. Whether hearing them from your boss, coworkers or customers, buzzwords can be a major source of irritation, obscuring rather than clarifying someone's point. There are, however, some types of business lingo that can aid in effective communication. Knowing the difference between helpful business language and the kind that should be banned is an increasingly vital skill in today's communication-driven workplace.
"When we talk about business jargon, we are generally referring to one of two things — words that are peculiar to a trade or words that are pretentious, unintelligible or gibberish," small business advisory Flying Solo explains. "And sometimes we can experience a spectacular combination of the two."
Despite its negative reputation, business jargon continues to proliferate, perhaps because those who use it don't recognize it as jargon or because they have become habituated to the quality of communication in their work environment. Either way, research shows that professionals across the board dislike office-speak.
A mid-2009 survey from staffing firm Accountemps identified the most irritating business buzzwords and phrases based on responses from 150 senior executives at major United States firms.
Here are the top 10 from the findings and their supposed meanings:

Leverage: To use something. According to the jargon dictionary from theOfficeLife.com, "A list of the worst business jargon would, of course, be incomplete without it."

Reach out: To make contact. This is "a dramatic way of saying a very mundane thing."

It is what it is: There's nothing we can do about it. As in, "The server is down today, and clients are irate. It is what it is."

Viral: Popular and spreading. As in, "Our video has gone viral."

Game changer: "A sports term describing a critical point with the potential to alter the overall outcome."

Disconnect: An inconsistency. As in, "There is a disconnect between what the consumer wants and what the product provides."

Value-add: As in, "We have to evaluate the value-add of this activity before we spend more on it." It's a "typical biz-speak reversal of 'added value."

Circle back: To return. As in, "I'm heading out of the office now, but I will circle back with you later."

Socialize: To reconcile. As in, "We need to socialize this concept with our key stakeholders."

Interface: A complicated way of saying "communicate." As in, "My job requires me to interface with all levels of the organization."

Unfortunately, these types of business jargon aren't isolated to conversation. In fact, they have a tendency to make it into work e-mail, memos and reports, reducing the general quality of business writing.
"Unfortunately, years of language dilution by lawyers, marketers, executives and HR departments have turned the powerful, descriptive sentence into an empty vessel optimized for buzzwords, jargon and vapid expressions," Inc.com explains. "Words are treated as filler — 'stuff' that takes up space on a page."
However, not all business terminology is stale and tired. A separate article from Inc.com lists some original buzzwords that might actually improve the quality of communications:

Big hairy audacious goal: The use of humor makes this more memorable than most goal-related phrases, and hyperbole provides some motivation.

Frictionless: A highly descriptive term that visualizes how business processes should run.

Knowledge worker: Emphasizes the mental contributions of certain employees rather than just their profitability.

Management by walking around: This is a humble and vivid description of good leadership.

Angel: "What better metaphor for the answer to an entrepreneur's prayers?" Inc.com asks.

Just in time: This phrase evokes both resourcefulness and efficiency in work processes.

Decoding The Latest Business Buzzwords

published on: cbsnews

MarketWatch's Marshall Loeb Translates Some Of The Latest Conference Room Lingo
(MarketWatch) Buzzwords have always been a part of the business lexicon. But just like street slang, the language of business changes. For instance, today's business words are heavily influenced by the technological times we live in.

From Megan Aemmer of MSN Encarta, here are some popular buzzwords to help you decode the jargon of today's business world:

Offline: You speak to someone offline when you need to talk with them in person or one on one on the phone rather than via email or instant message. It can surface in a meeting or conference call, when some sensitive or long-winded issue comes up that can be discussed more privately or efficiently without the group. "Let's take that offline, after the meeting."

Ping. Also Pinging: If you need to get someone's attention, you "ping" them, usually via email or instant message. Before the Internet, ping was used to describe the sound of a submarine's sonar. "When you get the chance, ping him for his contact information."

Deep Dive: When someone asks you to do a deep dive, they're asking for more in-depth information. This pops up frequently in research or consulting services. The phrase "drill down" can also be used in a similar context. "We did a deep dive of that telecom company, but we still need to drill down on their margins."

Bandwidth: In computer science, digital bandwidth refers to the capacity of the system to transfer data over a connection. But in the world of business jargon, bandwidth refers to a person's available time to complete a task. "My bandwidth is getting too sapped by the January report" or "I don't have the bandwidth to work on another report right now."

Decoding Business Buzzwords

published on: CNN

From "scalable" to "enterprise," many words enter our business lingo, but some say they're just mumbo-jumbo. Here's the plain English explanation of buzzwords that can leave you going "huh?": In the business world, we tend to be overly fond of fancy words and phrases, says a recent article from the Associated Press. For example, high-tech companies don't simply make products, they "provide solutions." And those solutions don't simply perform tasks, they give us "experiences."
In short, we've gotten carried away--something that tech terminology expert Alan Freedman realized when people started asking him to decode the marketing materials of technology companies. And this marketing speak is supposed to get people to purchase products.
Even Freedman, who's written technology encyclopedias for 25 years, is left confused by the latest slew of buzzwords. "The marketing people are so bad at hyping their products that, with all my experience, I'll have to read and reread and reread just to figure out what this thing does," Freedman, founder of The Computer Language Company Inc. in Pennsylvania, tells the Associated Press.

So here's a clarification of some words that are particularly annoying to many:

Scalable: This simply means that something can be expanded. Points out Fredric Paul, TechWeb editor-in-chief, who would love to banish this word for good, "My son is scalable, he's got built-in room to grow."

Enterprise: According to the AP article, Paul finds this word especially vexing, something that a Star Trek fan would say. Translation: "big company."

Viral marketing: A campaign that spreads very quickly. Supposed to be positive but sounds like something you don't want to catch.

Stickiness: A Web page quality that captures people's interest.

Blog: A combination of "Web" and "log." It's simply an online journal. More on it in this article.
Meanwhile, a hilarious Web log from Monster nominates 10 buzzwords for execution. Here's a few of them...

Best practices: Means a few so-so ways to get things done. Used when the best way eludes people.

FYI (For Your Information): Something to call a long e-mail thread of questionable relevance.
Action items: To-do's to pass off to other people in a meeting.

Think outside the box: According to the Monster post, "This is a way of saying, 'Don't think like you normally do--pretend you're someone smarter."