“When everyone’s super, no one will be” and other meaningless words to avoid

You know that feeling when you repeat a word so often it loses its meaning?

Try saying “fork” a lot. Look at how it’s spelled. Sound it out. Isn’t it a weird word? Who decided that it’s a proper English word, anyway?

The phenomenon is called semantic satiation, and it describes what happens when you repeat a word so much that, at least for a while, it loses meaning. It just sounds like a bunch of sounds and looks like a bunch of letters. (And if you’re like me, you get existential about it.)

Unless you’re getting fancy with your literary techniques and trying to prove a point, it’s pretty unlikely you’ll need to worry about semantic satiation in your content. But it does teach us a lesson about how easily the meaning we attach to words can disappear.

How does it happen? Here are the top offenders in my experience.

Words that exaggerate reality

How do you catch someone’s attention and get them excited for what you have to say? Easy – you hype it up with some over-the-top language to drive that emotion home. The only problem: when you do that enough, you take the excitement out of it. We see these words so often that they don’t pack the same punch they used to.

Unless you live up to your “amazing” claims, you could be letting your readers down – and hurting your credibility. It’s a common issue among clickbait titles and misleading headlines.

Watch for words like:

• Incredible
• Best
• Shocking

Words that everyone uses

Any fans of The Incredibles here? If so, you might recall this quote from Syndrome: “Everyone can be super! And when everyone’s super… no one will be.” Some words are so saturated in our content (especially the stuff we write about ourselves) that they stop standing out and start blending in.

Buzzwords and words that are currently on-trend are common offenders, so pay particular attention for those types of language.

Watch for words like:

• Unique
• Innovative
• Quality

Words that are vague

If you can replace a key word in your copy with almost any other word, chances are it won’t mean a whole lot to your readers. Ditto if one word is used over and over again to describe a whole range of very different things. This happens a lot when we market products and services that do a lot of things and don’t fall into one easy-to-describe category.

There’s another caveat with vague words as well: they mean different things to different people. Better to be specific and precise and spend a few more words on it than cause confusion over what it is you’re really offering.

Watch for words like:

• Solution
• Experience
• Success

Words that are subjective

We live on the inside of our companies and our industries. There’s no escaping the fact we have a different take on the features we offer than our customers do. What we find interesting and important isn’t necessarily what they find interesting and important.

The last thing we want is a reader who disagrees with us when we’re leading them with these words. If they look back and say, “that really wasn’t interesting,” then we haven’t really taken their side into consideration, have we?

Watch for words like:

• Important
• Interesting
• Exciting

Words that take up space

It’s great to be conversational in your content, but there are some things we’d say to another person that don’t translate well into writing. I’m thinking of crutch words and filler words we use while we think of the next thing we want to say. Using them becomes habit, so we don’t always know we’ve fallen victim to their influence.

They’re easily identifiable, though, because you can usually remove them from your content without sacrificing your message.

Watch for words like:

• Really
• Very
• Actually

If these words are so bad, why do we see them so often?

Easy. They’re easy.

In some cases, they’re the default words we reach for when nothing else comes to mind.  When pressed for time and resources, we look to what we’ve seen in practice before.

In others, they’re standard in the industry, or used by competitors. You’d be hard-pressed to find a company that doesn’t have  excellent customer experience” or something similar in their key messaging. It’s everywhere, and you need to be competitive – so shouldn’t you use it, too?

Sometimes, they’re an easy solution to a difficult language problem. If you have a product that’s difficult to sum up in one word, using something general and vague saves you a lot of time and effort compared to finding a more specific and descriptive option.

There are better ways.

What do we use instead?

So maybe you really do provide an excellent customer experience. What is it about your customer experience that makes it excellent? Is it your response time? The trouble you’ll go through to get an answer?

Use that. “We’ll respond to your question within an hour” is a pretty good indicator that you’re on top of your customer service game, and it paints a much more vivid picture.

The best part is, you’re using simple and clear language, being precise and honest, while conveying a stronger message. You’re showing us how you do it, not telling us that you do it.

Enter the rule: show, don’t tell. Don’t tell us that a note is important; there are lots of other ways to make important things stand out. Don’t tell us that something is interesting; make it interesting on its own. Don’t tell us that you offer a “solution”; demonstrate what that solution does for your customers.

Think about how your customers will read what you’ve written, what will resonate most with them, and what will give them the information they need to understand what you’re saying. If you’re not sure, don’t be afraid to ask a few of them.

As for the words you choose, learn your worst offenders and watch for them. For example, I default to using filler words and phrases like “more and more” in a lot of my first drafts – and then promptly edit them out in review. It takes some amount of vigilance, honesty, and courage to pick out your fallbacks, ask “does this really mean anything?” and get rid of anything that doesn’t make the cut.

In some cases, these kinds of words are appropriate. There are legitimate uses for “really” and “very” and “important.” But ask yourself why they’re in your content.

If you don’t have a good explanation, leave those meaningless words behind.