Butterfly Copywriting » Uncategorized

Most annoying words

Lucy Smith — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:00:47 +0000

I saw an article a few weeks ago about people’s most despised words. Apparently, ‘whatever’ was voted the most annoying word by about 50% of respondents in a US poll. I don’t have a problem with it, but I have got in trouble for using it when I couldn’t be bothered finishing an argument before (oops – must try harder).

So to follow up my words I like, here are some (or their uses) I don’t:

1) ‘Of’ used incorrectly. It’s should have, or should’ve, people. Not should of. I know it’s a common dislike, but I don’t always have to be different.

2) ‘Gay’ to mean something someone dislikes. It just annoys me.

3) Most business speak. This includes words like ‘synergy’, ‘moving forward’, ‘stakeholders’, ‘strategic development’, and dozens of others that make me twitch.

4) ‘Literally’ when people are exaggerating or using metaphor. You’re literally starving? Someone call World Vision! You literally died of embarrassment? Aaaah! Zombies!

A lot of people I know hate the word ‘moist’ (mind, meet gutter) but I don’t really. It makes me think of cake, and I like cake. Especially moist chocolate cake.

Apostrophe Abuse

Lucy Smith — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:27:52 +0000

I love this. Thank you, twittch.com

I’m glad I’m not a PR lackey for…

Lucy Smith — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 04:27:29 +0000

I used to work in PR. If we knew a positive story about us was going to be on the news, the team would crowd around the 14″ with bad reception in the boss’s office, bursting with pride over a job well done. If it was not such a good story, we’d go into full damage-control mode and hope that the boss would know what to do. I’m pleased not to be in that industry any more, mainly because I like what I’m doing now. But I like watching the news for incidents with people and organisations so I can say, “man, I’m glad I don’t do PR for them.” Some that spring to mind:

1. The University of Otago. In the last 12 months the vast majority of their mentions in the news has been to do with murderous economics tutors and alcohol-fuelled student riots.

2. Kanye West. Whether the MTV thing was a hoax or not, he’s always pissing people off one way or another. It would be a never-ending, thankless job.

3. Wanganui/Whanganui mayor Michael Laws. See comment about Kanye West (less the part about MTV).

4. The All Blacks. The best PR they can get is to win. That’s not something they’ve been doing lately.

5. The Government. Choose a nation. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Butterfly Copywriting is now on Twitter

Lucy Smith — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 05:06:40 +0000

As well as living and breathing words, I’m now finding that I have to eat them too. After all I’ve said about Twitter being ridiculous, I have now taken a deep breath, started an account, and begun to use it.

I decided that, as social networking is a big part of my industry, it would be unhelpful for me to deliberately ignore one of the major players. No longer the domain of giggly schoolkids, I’m noticing more and more industry professionals have hopped on the Twitter bandwagon, and there’s no point in me trotting behind it, trying to keep up.

I’ll do my best to keep my tweets relevant though, and not tweet for the sake of it – which I suspect is where all the ‘vacuous drivel’ I’ve railed against has sprung from. Even I’m not that interested in what I eat for breakfast, and I’m sure you aren’t, either.