Hyperbole alert: You’re about to read an ‘exciting’ article!

Exciting. It’s the lazy marketer’s favorite word.

A quick search for this common hyperbole in my inbox returned the following examples of distinctly unexciting news and offers.

Think of them next time you’re tempted to draw on this overused, overblown adjective. If there’s a chance your reader won’t really be trembling in anticipation, choose a different word.

1. A networking lunch featuring as a guest speaker a “best-selling author of over 30 books covering a wide variety of beauty, health and lifestyle issues.”

I’m an introvert. I hate talking to strangers, let alone with the sole purpose of bigging up my business. So if by exciting, you meant excruciating, then your networking event is suitably billed.

However, I can think of nothing duller than listening to some halfwit blather on, over mediocre food, about “beauty, health and lifestyle issues.”

What is a “lifestyle issue” anyway?

2. Additions to the new exercise timetable at my local gym.

Exercise: the only thing I find more excruciating than networking (and duller than discussions of “lifestyle issues”).

3. A series of debates about “real food”.