I really wanted to like this Huff Post Business profile of Catherine Courage at Citrix. Alas, I couldn’t get past this sentence without going all Judgy McJudgerton:

Her determination and passion to grow design as a core differentiator led to the competency becoming a company-wide initiative and to the elevation of her role to senior vice president of customer experience.

What the heck does that even mean? It sounds like it was created with a keyword generator.

(See also: “Their mission is to partner with functions across the company to deliver an outstanding experience for both customers and employees.” Huh?? How does one “partner” with a “function”?)

I loathe whatever forces of evil compel people to compete at bastardizing English into an alien landscape of jargon.

. . . says the person who happily adopts Twitterisms . . .

Ahem. Yeah, well . . .

Maybe my frustration has to do with the fact that I don’t tend to use LOLspeak in a professional context, but corporatespeak is supposed to be the epitome of professionalism.

Or maybe because I read in the use of these self-important-sounding words a neediness on the part of the writer to make themselves sound important. Nobody likes a braggart.

Or perhaps I distrust the coinage of grandiose words that I suspect could be an attempt to veil true meaning.

Or I could just be a style snob who prefers plainer language.

How might I rewrite that stumbling-block sentence above (using context from the article)?

Her determination and passion to make her company stand out through its focus on consumer-oriented design led to company-wide adoption of her strategy and to her promotion to senior vice president of customer experience.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat, but not all of those ways are equally elegant, and some are downright grotesque.

Such is the challenge of wordsmithing.