Marketers love a good rebrand, including the rebranding of language itself. — Social change often starts with the words we choose to talk about a group or situation, but I’m more curious about popularized terminology we now genuinely use (i.e., phrases we say without irony) whose origins were potentially conjured up in the boardroom rather than in the basements of social justice. Some examples that come to mind:

Advocates of non-binary gender equality, and grammar nerds, collectively rejoice. But what will the bots think? — 1. “Every customer thinks they want one thing, but we discover what they actually need.” Spot the errors in the sentence above? According to old-school grammar police, this sentence should be corrected to: 2. “Every customer thinks he or she wants one thing, but we discover what he or she…

You’re too damn busy running the world to do it all yourself Ghostwriting can get a bad rap. Journalists love a good debate over whether or not the profession is even ethical. Since I make a living by ghostwriting for executives and entrepreneurs, I’ll let you guess which side of the argument I rest on. I want to give a huge shout…

The Citizens Against Full-Time, Normal-Ass, Employment-How-It-Used-To-Be Association’s top five reasons why nothing beats the life of a home-lancer Greetings! Your friends at the Citizens Against Full-Time, Normal-Ass, Employment-How-It-Used-To-Be Association (CAFTNAEHIUTBA for short) understand that you might at times look back fondly on your days as a full-time employee for some…

The morning started out fine. Plowing through the endless to-do list as per plan. Finally sent a high-stakes proposal around noon. Now, waiting for that one potential client to respond to my email. The email I whispered a few Hail Mary’s over as I hit send. The one that could…

Have you done it? Yeah, you have. I’ve done it too; scrolled through too many glossy social posts, the ones that entice me to love my urban lifestyle, outdoor adventure, fitness and indulgence. …

I love your bad copy. Your split infinitives display the brash recklessness of a 16-year-old with car keys and a stolen six-pack. I hope you take that as a compliment. You were fearless when writing it all down. And I do mean all of it. Even though, technically speaking, it’s…