Page 67 - TX_Marketing 2_M1_v2

Buzz words are fashionable, industry-specific terms. There are many business-

related buzz words with which you are probably familiar, many of which begin with
"e" (e-solutions, e-trading, etc.). They also include terms such as:

Company-wide

Pro-active
Interfacing

Lexicon

Solutions

Neither buzz words nor modifiers are inherently bad. They have appropriate and

important uses. For example, they can help specify meaning, which helps limit
misunderstandings, they can be effective marketing tools, and they can illustrate that

you are up on current industry trends. However, when used in excess buzz words

and modifiers tend to make a presentation or passage awkward and confusing.

If you have so many modifiers or buzz words that the "meat" of the sentence (the

nouns and verbs) is lost, or if properly hyphenating the compound modifiers is
difficult because you cannot tell what is modifying what, then you need to cut some

of the excess. Buzz words and modifiers are like statistics in that they have an

important place, but when overused they make a passage difficult to follow and can
confuse an otherwise valid—and possibly simple—point.

Here are a few tips for properly using modifiers and buzz words:
Ensure that your audience will know the meaning of the terms. Fashionable

industry terms may be lost on people that do not specifically work in your

sector of a particular industry.
Properly hyphenate any strings of modifiers or buzz terms to clarify what term

is modifying what.

Do not modify any one verb or noun with more than two or three adjectives or

adverbs and, in general, use only one if you must use them at all. (There is often little

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