The owner of a car lot narrated the following radio ad:

“…These cars are heavily incentivized…”

Incentivized?

I’ve heard of “offering incentives”-but incentivized?  I had to check it out. Sure enough, it’s in the dictionary, and it means “to give incentives to.” Another form of the verb is incentivizing (what a mouthful!).

I stand corrected. Incentivized really is a word. But is it the appropriate word to use when advertising cars-or anything, for that matter? It’s a hundred dollar word. For those of you who speak English as a second language, “hundred dollar word” is when someone uses a big, impressive-sounding word when a small one will do.

What could the car salesman have said instead of, “These cars are heavily incentivized”?

How about:

• Buy this car today, and you’ll get a $2,000 rebate.
• Our cars are priced to sell.
• No one is buying our cars during this recession, and we’re panicking. To keep from going out of business, we’re offering you the best discount ever.

OK, that last one probably wouldn’t work, even though it’s closest to the truth.

Which brings up another hundred dollar phrase:  economic downturn

Sounds so soft, palatable, and hopeful, doesn’t it? We all know it’s a recession, so just call it what it is!

Here’s another one that drives me crazy: leverage

Whenever I attend business meetings, people talk about leveraging this and that. The word started out as a noun that means “power or ability to influence people, events, decisions,” or “to get a high return off one’s investment.”  Now converted into a verb, it’s  batted around in the marketing world like a beach ball. People must think “leveraging” makes them sound important and educated.

Yes, I understand it’s easier to say, “Let’s leverage our investment” instead  of, “Let’s shoot for a high return on our investment.”

But it would comfort me to hear people speaking like human beings and not robots.

Here are more hundred dollar words I found online:

• Irrefutably: Michael Phelps is irrefutably the world record holder in several swimming events.
• I concur: I concur with your hypothesis, Sherlock.
• Wherewithal and doggedly: The detective had the wherewithal to doggedly pursue the kidnapper.
• Precipitate and hereby: Your actions hereby precipitate a lawsuit.

Your turn! What hundred dollar words grate like fingers on a chalkboard? How many can you cram into one sentence?

Tags: HeBlogsSheBlogs.com, hundred dollar words, legalese, Putrid Prose

Welcome to “Putrid Prose,” a regular feature we’re kicking off today.

As editors, proofreaders, and avid pleasure readers, Jim and I come across a lot of truly stinky writing (some of it, our own). In this column, we’ll share snippets that make our noses wrinkle in disgust. Of course, we’ll disguise the writer’s name and title of the piece, so as not to cause undue embarrassment.

Our goals:

• To add levity to the blogosphere (bloggers who dish out advice about marketing, writing, and blogging tend to take themselves entirely too seriously).
• To help you recognize common writing errors.
• To offer tips for how to fix bloopers in your own writing.
• To encourage you to collect and submit your own Putrid Prose examples, so we can all laugh (or grimace) together.

Let’s start with a whopping bad example from a direct mail piece Laura received last week. The following sentence is an amendment to a Custodial Account Agreement for Laura’s retirement fund:

The Custodian shall vote all shares that are held in the Participant’s custodial Account on the applicable record date for which proper instructions have not been timely received from the Participant in the same proportion as the Custodian has been instructed to vote the shares in other custodial accounts for which it serves as custodian for which it has received timely instructions from depositors.

What’s wrong with this prose?

EVERYTHING!

The entire paragraph is one sentence. Bad, bad, bad. The above sentence is 64 words. Waaaay too long. When you draft prose, whether it’s an amendment to the Constitution or a sentence in a novel, keep your sentence lengths manageable. Try opening with an extremely short sentence (one-word, two-word or three-word sentences really pop), and following up with a lengthier sentence.

The sentence uses legalese. Pet peeve alert! Legalese – the “insider” jargon people use within a particular industry – drives me nuts. Why can’t they speak plain English? After all, the audience for this so-called information is me, the retirement fund owner. The company that mailed this piece to me put the amendment on a separate postcard, all by itself. They must have thought it was really, really important. I’ve read this piece at least five times, and cannot make heads or tails of it. If you can’t say it in plain, simple English, don’t say it at all.

Readers, please share your criticism about this piece. How would you rewrite it?

Now it’s your turn. Start collecting samples of Putrid Prose and send them to us. If we choose to feature your sample, we’ll include a short bio about you and a link to your site. Let’s have some fun with this!

Tags: direct mail, editing, HeBlogsSheBlogs.com, legalese, Putrid Prose, Writing