The pretentious ass curve (and how to stay off it)
I never expected a 1982 memo to be the highlight of a Zoom call.
A few of us had been bemoaning one thing: death by corporate jargon.
How gobbledygook slows everything down.
How people use 50-dollar words to disguise 5-cent ideas.
How a simple point can disappear beneath layers of legalese and executive-speak.
That culture of obfuscation and one-upmanship was part of what drove several of us out of corporate life to build something of our own.
When someone leans on heavy jargon, I can’t help wondering: are they trying to sound smarter than everyone else, or have they not yet worked out what they really mean?
Then I shared David Ogilvy’s memo, How to Write.
#4 struck a collective nerve:
“Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.”
Hard to improve on that, so I made a graph of his offending words.
As jargon rises, so does the pretentious-ass quotient.
Complexity is rarely a sign of intelligence. Usually, it is a place to hide.
New rule: If I wouldn’t say it over coffee, it doesn’t go in the copy.
Whimsically yours,
Monojoy
Storyteller, Oddly Obvious
Because good stories like good company:
