Written by Alice Franklin
Copywriter
It’s a scientific fact: using long words doesn’t make you any smarter. When someone says “facilitate” instead of “help”, it does not make their IQ shoot to the sky. When someone else says “ameliorate” instead of “improve”, it doesn’t make them the sharpest crayon in the colouring toolkit.
That said, it might make them feel smarter – or even seem smarter in some situations. Personally, whenever I come across someone using “lackadaisical”, “lassitude”, or “soporific” in the wild, I am in awe. This person reads, I think. This person knows more words than me.
Is this why we in B2B love long words? Is it why we use “leverage” or “utilise” instead of “use”? Or “solution” instead of “tool”? Do we use these words to feel smarter?
At the end of the day, I’m not qualified to say.
But I will say – in B2B, everyone is using the same long words. There are an awful lot of folk utilising, innovating, leveraging, enabling and harnessing. And if you use the same (long) words as everyone else, you’ll find it nigh on impossible to cut through the noise.
Longerer words sometimes sound smarterer. But let’s at least make them original. Let’s at least make them precise.
Want to cut through the noise?