When I was a kid, we had a piano in the house. It was an attractive piece of furniture in our family room. I say that, cause no one in our family knew how to play it (beyond say, “Chopsticks”).

But (for reasons which still elude me), we once had it professionally tuned. Now, I’d seen pianos being tuned before. It’s done electronically with a device that analyzes each note and indicates whether it’s flat or sharp. But the guy who tuned our piano had no device — cause he was totally blind.

Think about it. A blind piano tuner (watch the video). Born without sight, this guy’s hearing was so super-sensitive, he could immediately detect the slightest imperfection in each note, and adjust it back to pitch-perfect just by listening.

To him, an out-of-tune note is like a physical discomfort, and he’s the doctor who relieves patients of their pain.

In some ways, that’s what we communicators do. Only not with musical notes, but rather, with words. When we hear something that’s not right — we just know. It gets under our skin, and makes us uncomfortable. In some cases, it triggers our gag reflex and makes us wanna lose our lunch. And we’ve gotta fix it.

We came across a posting on the Harvard Business Review website recently where a noted wordsmith ranted on about speakers and presenters who use the phrase, “Does that make sense?” as a way to faux-interact with their audience. He also invoked Strunk and White’s axiom “Always use definite, specific concrete language” in railing against the overuse of qualifiers like “pretty much,” “actually,” and “basically.”

I have a few hurl-inducers (and I bet you do, too!):

• The complete and utter dependency on tired, overused hack phrases. When I hear: “at the end of the day,” “getting my (whatever) on,”  and the syrup-of-ipecac-like “thinking outside the box” it makes me feel like I’m on the Tilt-A-Whirl right after slamming three funnel cakes. (FYI: The satirical newspaper The Onion burns these cliches the way diesel engines consume sweet Texas crude.)
• Over-acronyzation. Every industry and every company has ‘em. I come from the airline business, and I could go on all day about PAWOBs and AOG and FOD.  But if I did, before I got to my point you’d already be DOA. Which means I’d be SOL.
• Improper pronunciation of the word “the.” Such a simple word (the most common in the English language) and yet, so frequently mispronounced. There’s a huge difference between “thuh” and “thee.”  When the next word starts with a vowel-sound you’ve gotta say “thee” instead of “thuh.” Learn it. Know it. Live it. I recently listened to a woman (who I know to be really smart) who got “thuh” and “thee” wrong about 50 times.  She said, “We need to appeal to thuh end user.”  And, “When you put the shoe (said correctly) on thuh other foot (said incorrectly).” She then said she’d take questions, “…at thuh end of the presentation.” Here’s my question: “Where’s thuh barf-bag?”

Words matter. They send signals (conscious and subconscious, emotional AND physical) that have a huge bearing on your company’s ability to succeed. They are our mileau, our weapons, our tools. Guard them with your life.

HOW ABOUT YOU?  What words or phrases get under YOUR skin?