Plain English Foundation - 2010

Australian company, Plain English Foundation released its annual 'words and phrases of the year' for 2010.

There was new business jargon, such as ‘thought showers’, ‘strategic staircases’, and
According to Foundation Executive Director Dr Neil James, “The best you can say about


See full list of words/phrases here.

these words is that they dress up something simple just to sound impressive. At their worst,

they are deliberately trying to obscure reality or paper over the unpleasant.”

‘disintermediation’. There was classic spin doctoring, such as ‘removal pathways’ (deportation) and  the ‘investment in human capital’ (a new tax). Our teenagers contributed ‘maggoted’ and text initialisms such as ‘HMU’. And not to be outdone, the academics this year came up with ‘agonistic respect’ and ‘flexibilising’. This year, the Foundation also decided to nominate a winner—a word or phrase that encapsulates the worst elements of our public language.

“For our inaugural worst word or phrase of the year, we couldn’t go past the main slogan of the Australian Labor Party’s Federal election campaign: ‘moving forward’,” Dr James said.

“Just when we thought this business cliché had dropped from use, Julia Gillard robotically repeated the phrase ‘moving forward’ more than 20 times during her announcement of the election,” Dr James said. “It showed how the election was driven more by focus-group research than political leadership. The public can tell the difference.”

“The problem with a phrase like this is that it hints vaguely at progress without committing to anything concrete. Politicians can sound positive without being held to account for breaking a promise.”

‘Moving forward’ was a narrow winner in a strong field. See below for the full list of the Plain English Foundation’s worst words and phrases of 2010.