Friday, October 19, 2012

Adjectnouns

Following my recent string of posts on senseless marketing terms, I've decided it's time to quit driving myself crazy and return to carping about real language (seeing the terms "Couponable" and "IncreDQable" was the last straw).

So on to the business world, where apparently everyone's so busy they can't take the time to utter an adjective AND the noun it's modifying -- so they just stop at the adjective. It's not "creative marketing" or "creative design"; it's just "creative." As in, "I work in creative."

I once signed on with an agency called Freelance Creative. I kept calling it Creative Freelance because either way it didn't make sense to me. It was just two adjectives. Freelance Creative what? Creative Freelance what?

I also worked for a company called XXX Legal & Regulatory. Legal and regulatory WHAT, dammit?!

And the list is growing. I'm told "interactive" is also a victim of this crime. And yesterday I saw twice the mention of just "social" for social media. "How businesses are achieving success with social." Grrr ...

I fear that the abbreviated world of texting and Twittering is to blame. A related trend has some hipster colleagues of mine using "sitch" for situation and "obvy" for obviously. Ugh. And don't get me started on "totes."

What was that I said about driving myself crazy?