It is what it is

I recall noticing this phrase for the very first time back in the early part of this decade. And after that initial offense, the "it is what it is" references poured in from every direction. Everybody from the President of the United States down to the guy who sweeps up the coffee shop on 10th and State is knocking the doors off of "it is what it is." But what does it mean? Some claim that it's akin to "que sera, sera" or "whatever will be, will be." This makes sense, but it sure seems as though people are, and have been, misusing and overusing this phrase for several years running. I'm not sure what to make of it, but find some satisfaction in saying, "it is what it is."

A glance at the hard data shows us that from 1990-1999, we averaged almost 5 mentions of today's target phrase per year. It would appear as though the tipping point (yes, more on this later!) came somewhere between 1999 and 2003 when things began to tick upwards. From 2000-2009, the yearly average for "it is what it is" climbed to slightly more than 33. And thus far into 2010, we have seen 29 uses in the widely circulated publication which serves as our baseline; this projects to a near record of 43.5 uses moving forward.

year....... frequency
1990....... 1
1991....... 1
1992....... 2
1993....... 5
1994....... 2
1995....... 4
1996....... 9
1997....... 7
1998....... 5
1999....... 11
2000....... 13
2001....... 14
2002....... 18
2003....... 32
2004....... 43
2005....... 40
2006....... 49
2007....... 42
2008....... 46
2009....... 35
2010....... 29

Paradigm Shift

I hear it often at meetings. I read it in the literature of my chosen profession. It's used so frequently that it's almost always misused. Don't say it; chose another word or phrase instead. It doesn't make you look smart and well read, it makes you look like a child who is repeating something she doesn't quite understand in an effort to gain the approval of her parents.

An examination of the raw data (see below) reveals that there were but 3 mentions of "paradigm shift" in the 1990 volume year of a noted national news publication. This has increased steadily over the course of two decades. There were 42 paradigm shift bombs dropped in 2009. And so far in 2010 we have seen 31 PS bombs -- that's a record pace of 46.5 moving forward.

year....... # of "paradigm shifts"
1990....... 3
1991....... 7
1992....... 4
1993....... 7
1994....... 12
1995....... 7
1996....... 13
1997....... 17
1998....... 15
1999....... 27
2000....... 30
2001....... 24
2002....... 25
2003....... 16
2004....... 27
2005....... 34
2006....... 30
2007....... 40
2008....... 37
2009....... 42
2010....... 31

(data collected from noted national news publication on 08/23/2010)

Our inaugural overused phrase: moving forward

I hear it all the time. Politicians use it, as in, "We are moving forward with our economic stimulus plan." Managers of professional sports teams often drop the MF bomb in press conferences, as in, "He's our starting quarterback moving forward." Life coaches and self help gurus take it to the bank. And Toyota has even adopted it as their tagline. But what does it mean? I'm not sure... It seems as though in most cases it's an attempt to put some sort of hyper-positive spin on whatever topic is on the table.

Below is some data we pulled from a noted national news publication. You can also examine the the trendline and data plotted on the chart above. As you can see, the rate of use of "moving forward" has been increasing steadily. In the years between 1990 and 1999 we saw average of 250.2 uses per month. This increased to 383.7 when we analyzed the years between 2000 and 2009. In fact, 2009 was a record year with 512 uses of moving forward. And so far in 2010, we have seen 373 uses which puts us on a record shattering pace of 559.5 moving forward.

year........ # "moving forwards"
1990........ 231
1991........ 187
1992........ 197
1993........ 205
1994........ 239
1995........ 225
1996........ 261
1997........ 261
1998........ 342
1999........ 354
2000........ 375
2001........ 445
2002........ 432
2003........ 437
2004........ 486
2005........ 502
2006........ 459
2007........ 470
2008........ 486
2009........ 512
2010........ 373

(data collected from noted national news publication on 08/14/2010)

Introducing Hyperused: a blog about overused words and phrases

Buzzwords, cliches, and trendy language (trendy anything, really), have always annoyed my team and me. As such, we have decided to launch this blog as a vehicle to vent, cope, and maybe, just maybe, contribute something to the world of those who concern themselves with overused words and phrases.

There are plenty of lists of the overused out there on the internet. We love these lists and consult them regularly. What separates our content from most of these lists is the hard data we will compile for each of our entries. Our frequency-of-use data is based upon 20 years of content analysis of major national news publications. We will conduct this content analysis for every piece we post and will publish our raw data for all to see.

Word and grammar nazis we are not... In fact, we're quite certain you'll find plenty of spelling and grammatical errors in these soon to be published pages. We don't really care much about grammar and spelling. But know when something creases us, and overused words and phrases certainly fall into that creased category.

We hope you enjoy! Please feel free to comment and send us any words / phrases you'd like us to analyze.