{"id":664,"date":"2010-03-15T11:09:15","date_gmt":"2010-03-15T11:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/?p=664"},"modified":"2010-03-13T16:14:05","modified_gmt":"2010-03-13T16:14:05","slug":"expecting-the-moon-on-a-stick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/15\/expecting-the-moon-on-a-stick\/","title":{"rendered":"Expecting the moon on a stick"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In January I wrote about the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/19\/can-you-speak-business\/\">Business Sentence Generator<\/a>, which spits out random sentences for use in corporate reports. Whilst the BSG was built for humour, a survey shows that it may not be far off the mark.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.office-angels.com\/WHATSNEWS\/Pages\/pressarchive.aspx?NewsID=17\">Office Angels<\/a> compiled a list of office jargon from the last decade, and their top ten reads as follows:<\/p>\n<p>\u2018We need the right pin numbers\u2019 \u2013 <em>\u2018we need it to work\u2019<\/em><br \/>\n\u2018A lighthouse on a cloudy night\u2019 \u2013 <em>coming up with a good\/bright idea<\/em><br \/>\n\u2018I\u2019m coming into this with an open kimono\u2019 \u2013 <em>throwing an idea out into the open but being open to criticism<\/em><br \/>\n\u2018Let\u2019s touch base about this offline\u2019 \u2013 <em>\u2018let\u2019s meet up face-to-face\u2019<\/em><br \/>\n\u2018Finger in the air figure\u2019 \u2013<em> just an estimate<\/em><br \/>\n\u2018I think someone needs a bite of the realilty sandwich\u2019 \u2013<em> someone needs to think a bit more practically<\/em><br \/>\n\u2018Let\u2019s run that idea up the flagpole and see if it flies\u2019 \u2013 <em>simply trying out an idea<\/em><br \/>\n\u2018Let\u2019s not try to build a chestnut fence to keep the sand-dunes in\u2019 \u2013 <em>face a problem head-on, rather than battling it unsuccessfully<\/em><br \/>\n\u2018Get all our ducks in a row\u2019 \u2013 <em>get everything in order<\/em><br \/>\n\u2018Expecting the moon on a stick\u2019 \u2013 <em>when clients have ridiculous expectations<\/em><\/p>\n<p>These sentences seem fairly redundant \u2013 why not just say what you mean? Sporting metaphors seem increasingly common \u2013 one reason why I hate \u2018touching base\u2019. Let\u2019s hope with the new decade we can ditch the jargon and communicate clearly with our coworkers \u2013 now that\u2019s a lighthouse on a cloudy night! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In January I wrote about the Business Sentence Generator, which spits out random sentences for use in corporate reports. Whilst the BSG was built for humour, a survey shows that it may not be far off the mark. Office Angels compiled a list of office jargon from the last decade, and their top ten reads [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,3,109,44],"tags":[658,549,660,663,51,662,661,124,659,44],"class_list":["post-664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-english","category-invented-languages","category-words","tag-business-jargon","tag-business-language","tag-corporate-speak","tag-jargon","tag-language","tag-metaphors","tag-office-jargon","tag-phrases","tag-sentences","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":666,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions\/666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}