The following is an excerpt from my newsletter, The Write of Way. If you’re interested in learning more, be sure to sign up here!
Can you spot the signs of pandemic semantic fatigue? You're looking at the screen, and certainly time has passed, but you've yet to actually land anywhere intellectually. Your eyes scan phrase after phrase as your mind turns to the dwindling supply of fatty snacks downstairs.
It's near-impossible to compete with thoughts of snacks. And yet here we are, rolling that boulder up the hill, day in and day out. It doesn't help that in the last two months, we seem to have confined ourselves to a select four or five turns of phrase that MUST preface any and all marketing communications.
Now more than ever - in these uncertain times - you know the ones!
I've used them as much as anyone else. But it's starting to feel like a Stage 1 kind of response, where you just want to say something thoughtful and eliminate any possibility of being an ass. But we all feel it. It's getting ... monotonous. It's becoming the text you scroll over, an invitation to zone out.
Specificity is almost always the antidote. Start with meaning. As a practice, whenever I feel I'm using a word too much, I look it up. (This is a fun test – do I even know what I'm saying?) Then, I take the definition and turn it into a question. That way, I can inch myself closer to translating a vague idea into a meaningful, relevant position someone might relate to. Let's workshop:
Step 1: Look it up
For example, "unprecedented."
Never done or known before
If you have the "well, actually," gene, this is the moment you realize ... pandemics aren't unprecedented! But back to the main point.
Step 2: Turn the definition into a question for your industry
As it relates to the industry/business I'm writing for, what specifically has never been done before? What do we know now that we didn't a month ago? What unknowns are we worrying about that we didn't even consider before (again, specifically as related to the industry)?
If you're going to use the word, you should be able to produce specific answers to these questions. And then those tailored ideas are what you should actually use in your copy, because "unprecedented" has become a cue to get bored and think about other things.
Step 3: Ask that same question of your customer
Now, what's something the customer of this business has never had to think about or understand before that is now on their mind? Again, we're trying to think of things specific to the offering, not just "wash hands more" (unless you're selling soap, I guess).
Step 4: Be more engaging than snacks (for a second anyway)
Once you're asking these questions, you're on the path to painting a picture of "unprecedented challenges" without inadvertently inviting the reader to ditch your effort and go get more Funyuns. Or you may find that unprecedented was never what you were really going for in the first place.
In conclusion, if you want to say something real, make meaning your compass.