I was reading a charity's blog the other morning and came across this sentence:

"This is a unique opportunity to leverage your donations..."

Reading it made me choke on my bran flakes. Even if the sentence did end "and make a huge difference to the lives of many people.”

Why that reaction? Well, apart from the fact that leverage is possibly my least favourite word, can anyone tell me what "leverage your donation" actually means? It’s hardly a phrase that’s going to inspire you to donate.

The word *leverage* is one of those marketing buzz words that people like to use to make things sound more important or interesting (when in fact, the effect is the opposite). It's a depressingly common word in the world of corporate communications, especially in the US. 

That content is king is a rather tired cliché about the web, but how you write on your website is hugely important. Remember who you are writing for and what you want them to understand and feel. If you ever asked a colleague if you could *leverage* their stapler for a minute, they would give you a funny look, right? Wouldn’t a potential donor react in the same way?

In his 'gobbledegook manifesto', online marketing expert David Meerman Scott tries to encourage marketers to discard the gobbledegook in their comms, and shares a study of the most popular words used in press releases by corporates. The top 5 reads “next generation”, “flexible”, “robust”, “world class” and “scalable”. 

As more and more people use those words, their impact is greatly decreased and they become clichés and easy to overlook. If you use them, well, you sound like every other organisation trying to get attention and are instantly ignored.

The last thing you want a supporter to do is ignore your content, so try to resist the temptation to overdress your copy with buzz words, unnecessary verbosity, opaqueness or tautologies (you see what I'm doing, right?).

A book I was advised (forced) to read before being allowed to write for the web is Essential English by the former editor of the Sunday Times, Harold Evans. It's a brilliant read for those wanting to tighten their copy and I'd highly recommend it. (Or should I say, I'd recommend it highly – maybe time to read it again).

We're all guilty of forgetting this sometimes, and there may be some exceptions, but writing your content in plain English that people will recognise and understand is simply the best way to communicate.