Things not to write at work (Part 1)

I am having an ongoing private joke at all the typos my random /Freudian fingers spill out into reports that the spellchecker (or worse, the quality assurance person who edits things) finds. I wish we could leave them all in, for a touch of the absurd in otherwise fairly straightforward documents… Those who have read this blog a few times will know that I favour off the cuff over immaculate spelling: call me a product of the laid back 1980’s schooling system (“just write it how you think it should be written!”) and proud.

For example? I love discovering that I have written‘pubic’ rather than ‘public’. As in ‘It may be beneficial to hold a pubic meeting’, or ‘the importance of consulting with the general pubic’ (just what exactly would that consultation look like?).

A new one was ‘magnetisable’ rather than ‘monetisable’ (seriously, who ever started using the term ‘monetisable’ anyway? It strikes me as the most nobbish, econo-dork word ever. Only slightly beating ‘disbenefit’ as my favourite stupid word of the month*). Yes, this benefit was ‘magnetisable’ using a calculation of avoided cost. Oh yes, we just ran a big piece of copper over it or something and made it into a magnet – isn’t it great? (‘Huh? Says client.)

*Why do I hate disbenefit as a word? Well how about saying ‘impact’? How about ‘negative impact’? How about ‘causing harm’?. No offense to anyone who is peer pressured into using the word in a legitimate work context, but a big ‘HELLO – what were you thinking?’ to whoever first put it into circulation.