The Cruellest Month for Clichés

The Committee has convened, and is pleased to approve the following for addition to the Banned List.

“Financial products.” Nominated by Dan Jackson. Or just “product” to refer to any non-tangible output.

“Palpable sense of relief.” Carlos Lozada, editor of Washington Post Outlook section editor.*

“The public square”, when not referring to Tahrir, Tiananmen, Trafalgar (pictured) and so on.

“Offers [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 13 April 2013 at 11:25 am

NUM: on the wrong side of history

The Committee has exercised commendable legislative restraint for a while, reluctant as it is to cross the Rubicon of statutory underpinning. But Oliver Letwin and Hugh Grant have persuaded it that it can no longer put off banning some more words and phrases. Here, then, are the next 10 additions to the Supplementary Banned List:

The [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 19 March 2013 at 2:49 pm

The Memo

I stumbled across this because Tom Doran asked if “I must have missed the memo” was on the Banned List. It wasn’t, but I did write this for a subscription website, Book Brunch, when the book was published in October 2011:
You obviously didn’t get the memo. The one that said the following words and phrases [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Monday, 4 March 2013 at 8:33 pm

The Banned List Buzzsaw

Many thanks to the good people at 1238 for creating “Buzzsaw“, an online cliché stripper. They have used a selection of words and phrases from my Banned List to build a database of unacceptable buzzwords and jargon.
All you do is copy some text – a news release from a rival public relations company, for example, or [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Thursday, 21 February 2013 at 3:37 pm

10 More Things Banned To Improve Your User Experience

The Committee has fast-tracked the following prohibitions at this point in time:
1. “X is poster child for Y.” Brought to the Committee’s attention by David Mills. This also features, in the series of Questions To Which The Answer Is No (QTWTAIN), as number 905, asked by Rupert Myers, the Telegraph blogger: “Following his move to France, [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Friday, 1 February 2013 at 10:32 am

Look, you can’t put that on the Banned List

The Banned List Committee is struggling to keep up with the backlog. There was a delay this morning as a special emergency session rejected an application to have “Look –” at the start of politicians’ sentences added to the List. Clive Davis and Holly Brodie made the kind of enthusiastic and confident appeals that would [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Thursday, 10 January 2013 at 1:09 pm

Most Annoying Phrases of 2012

Tom Watson has asked for contributions to his 2012 list of 2012 lists, so I nominate the Chatham House World Today Most Annoying Phrases of 2012.
This list, by Jargonbuster, is obviously a subsidiary of The Banned List, published in book form last year but still a jolly good idea for a Christmas present this year [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Thursday, 20 December 2012 at 10:47 pm

A learning to take away from the go-live

Hamish, a correspondent of mine, writes from a far shore of the corporate world bearing a sombre warning of some of the appalling usages that are seeping from the business world into normal English:

learning, noun.”I’m going to give you all a learning to take away from this meeting“. Means lesson.

vertical, noun. Corporate departments: Manufacturing, R&D, Sales, Marketing, [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 8 December 2012 at 5:34 pm

Rentoul’s Little Shop of Stocking Presents

Just what someone needs for Christmas. The book Questions To Which The Answer Is No. Just to remind you what it is about, here is a question asked by New Zealand television:
Can you teach a dog to drive?

Number 885 in my series, spotted by Paddy Briggs, who has already won a signed copy of the book. [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Thursday, 6 December 2012 at 4:15 pm

Mixed Metaphor Award: Boiled Canary

We have a winner. Markos Chrysostomou, chief executive officer of Haringey’s Citizens Advice Bureaux, on the effects of cuts in deprived areas:
We’re like the canary down the mine. We’re the first people who pick up what’s going on out there and what we’re seeing at the moment is a boiling pot whose lid is coming off. We’re [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 20 November 2012 at 8:12 pm