What fun to play with balloons!

After work this evening, I dug through the kids’ toys and found a hand pump and few small balloons. And as soon as I began inflating the first balloon, I knew how I would connect today’s make something assignment—to use balloons—with my theme of “words.”

Every day in my work with corporate communicators, I witness people blowing up their speech. Trying to sound important or “leading-edge,” they use big words when a small one would do. They invent ridiculous words and misuse perfectly good ones. They wear out clichés and sports analogies. They think they sound smart.

Their language can be colorful. But underneath that pretty gloss, the words become full of air. As those words stretch and stretch and stretch … they distort the message.

Inflated words.

In my experience, people who communicate this way don’t make a lasting or meaningful impression. Either we see through them, or their messages strain so hard against all that hot air …

They finally pop.