AdminOften, when I’m tasked with writing copy for a specific user flow, I’ll also be sent across brand guidelines, copywriting style guides, and examples of text from the marketing team. This all helps give me a clear idea of the voice, and the brand’s unique personality that should shine through in all contexts whether marketing or deep within the user journey.
This is different from the tone. For example, if I’m writing an error message, I imagine the user would feel frustrated. Depending on the context for the error, choosing a playful tone might just annoy them further and give them a negative impression of your product, in which case if my error message isn’t playful, I’m going to be feeling all kinds of disappointed). A more serious and direct tone might be more appropriate.
What does this have to do with 5 phrases that I find annoying? Well, overused phrases become clichés, and the more users read them.
A lot of the time, such overused words become overused in the first place because they are excellent at conveying a specific voice. But when it goes too far? I’d argue that they have the opposite effect. Rather than injecting your copy with personality, they can make it sound weak and familiar, meaning your voice is lost (hence my ramble about what voice means at the beginning).
And for more highly-strung users who have the patience of a tired toddler on a sugar-free detox like me, they can elicit reactions of disproportionate annoyance, increased blood pressure, and a lot of general huffing and puffing. (Yes, this is a disclaimer that this list is based on my personal opinion, and also I tend to be a smidge dramatic when it comes to reacting to words).
And another disclaimer — I’m not statingwhich companies my examples are from in most cases, nor am I out to shame these companies. Every writer and company has examples of overused language, so it’s purely to illustrate contexts.
Without further ado, here are some words that I feel like I’ve been seeing a lot everywhere and read as clichés in my mind. I’d love to hear any phrases you’ve had the same reaction to!
SOMETHING SOMETHING VIBES
Let’s kick off by me thoroughly showing my age. What even actually is a vibe? Why do I automatically say “thank you” when people send me vibes on WhatsApp? Do vibes contain calories? Can a vibe be a bad thing? Are vibes deeply ironic and only taken seriously by a minority of vibe-less individuals?The examples above are all taken from emails from a range of brands ranging from work to lifestyle and groceries, and in each case, it’s clear “vibes” is a more playful and arguably slightly more tangible way of expressing some sort of feeling.
But when you think about it, what’s being expressed here? It’s something hard to express. However, “vibes” feel like a cop-out. If your desired voice is “vague”, then by all means go for it, but it’s time to try putting those feelings in other words.
Otherwise, in 10 years, we’re going to have entirely replaced all feelings of any kind with the word vibes, and that’s going to go like this:
NO EMPLOYEES, JUST ROCKSTARS
Yes, this is a bandwagon, and I am jumping on board because I keep seeing “rockstars” everywhere. It began with start-ups and tech companies over-using it in job descriptions.
At some point, someone decided that “rockstar” is an acceptable synonym for “the best”, thus “hiring the best” became “hiring rockstars”, and “we need someone very talented to join our company and we can’t pay that much but you need to eat, sleep, live, breathe and sneeze our brand” became “we need a rockstar”.
And then it started bleeding out of job ads into general job vocabulary. Here are some headlines from professional publications and job posts (and yes, I didn’t blank out “Internwise” as a company in that second because it’s worryingly common to label unpaid internships as “rockstar” positions and that is absolutely not OK. In fact, bad vibes to any company labelling unpaid internships as “rockstars”).
