Comments on: The worst press release ever

By: That doesn’t mean what you think it means - Bad Language

That doesn’t mean what you think it means - Bad Language — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 07:48:59 +0000

[...] in 2006, I ran a post titled The worst press release ever. It made fun of all the words that people use in press release, like ‘quantum leap’ and [...]

By: Stephen

Stephen — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 19:47:57 +0000

At the risk of stating the obvious, these definitions, while correct, aren’t the only meanings of these words, and are not currently the most commonly implied meanings. The language isn’t driven by dictionaries. It’s driven by common usage. The result is, of course, histerical. The real crime for this press release is how utterly devoid it is of meaning. This is also common usage for advertising. One expects the phrase “unsurpased quality” to be synonymous with “no worse than similar products (or services)”.

As an American, i’ve been asked if it’s really true that Americans have a 40,000 word vocabulary. This is the average. And it’s a larger vocabulary than many other languages, such as Spanish. That doesn’t mean Americans are somehow smarter, or are more articulate. But i’ve been asked specificially if i have a 40,000 word vocabulary. My answer is “no”. I’m highly educated. The exercise is to get a dictionary that brags about how many words it defines. Get a sheet of paper. And do this about 30 times: open the dictionary to a random page, jam your finger into the left column, and move up until you get to a defined word. Read the entry and decide if you really know the word. Can you pronounce it? Can you use it in a sentence? If yes, add one to the column on your paper for ones you got, otherwise, mark it in the column for those you didn’t get. When you’re done, do the math. The number you got, divided by 30 (the number of trials), times the number of words the dictionary says it has, and that’s an approximation to the size of your vocabulary. For me, it was some 450,000. What does that mean? I dunno. I’m an engineer. I don’t know English. Right?

By: Content Writers Group

Content Writers Group — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 14:20:48 +0000

I agree. That is a rather strange press release. It’s more of an article, but it wouldn’t even qualify as that because it just breaks guideline policies left & right. He would be better off calling it an excerpt from a sales page more than anything else.

By: Roger Ash

Roger Ash — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:37:34 +0000

You seem to have made the common mistake of thinking that because a quantum is very small, thus a quantum leap is a very small leap. This is not the case – a quantum leap is an abrupt change.

By: Bad Language / Five cool links about writing

Bad Language / Five cool links about writing — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 08:30:25 +0000

[...] common phrases. My personal bugbear is misuse of ‘decimate.’ See also my post The worst press release ever for more [...]

By: Enterprise Velocity

Enterprise Velocity — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 20:14:09 +0000

How to Lose Your Credibility in Five Easy Steps…

Web 2.0, Google caches and blogs have given marketing flaks the power of instant communication. The ability to act impulsively has never been greater when it comes to messaging. The positives of participating in blogging far outweigh the negatives, but…