Overstatement is dead
Irony isn't.
Overstatement isn't dead at all. Overstatement is very much alive. Its health is ruder than we realise. Rumours of overstatement's demise are greatly... overstated.
Overstatement comes in sizes. I'm not concerned here with XXL Trumpian grandstanding. Most of us recognise peacock bombast for what it is. (Peacock is a deliberately gendered description because men are the usual culprits for brazenly overstating any kind of prowess.)
There's a more subtle and insidious form of overstatement that smothers and strangles business writing like ivy.
In the language of spy movies, this kind of overstatement lives in the shadows. But if you stop to look, you see it everywhere. It's shady but in full view. It's the involuntary, low-level gushing that peppers tender documents and LinkedIn posts.
"Our expert team..."
"Our highly experienced practitioners..."
"We'll craft your strategy."
"Dedicated."
"World class."
"Hot take.
"Highly accomplished."
"Unpopular opinion."
"Thought leadership."
I immediately think less of anyone who uses nouns like 'expert' and 'craft' as verbs. Those specific examples might be a matter of personal taste, but the general problem with this kind of understated overstatement is that it diminishes. You let yourself down when you puff yourself up. When you overstate you undermine. Over-assertion comes across as over-exertion and it all sounds a bit breathless as a result.
Overstatement might not be dead, but it can be deadly.
Overstatement is deadly if you want your writing to carry conviction and credibility. Overstatement is a symptom of insecurity. Your superfluous superlatives are a sign of weakness rather than strength. Your readers know when you're protesting too much. If you're overstating, you're overcompensating for some kind of deficiency. They don't believe your hype.
William Safire - columnist and presidential speechwriter - referred to these superfluous upgrader phrases as adverbial lapel grabbers or weakening reinforcers. This is part of his reply to a New York Times reader who wondered if other people shared her distaste for redundant overstatement. Gorgeous.
No, Miss Williamson, you are not solitarily alone. You are among the multitudinous many who wince at being subjected to the adverbial lapel-grabber or weakening reinforcer pressed upon us by speakers who worry about being considered too unimportant to be listened to - or who think their listeners are too preoccupied to understand. William Safire: New York Times, January 6, 1980.
Weakening reinforcers include words like 'very' and 'highly,' which are known as degree adverbs or adjectives. They are a lazy, lapel-grabbing way of dialling up meaning. Everyone does it. I do it.
When I'm editing my own work, checking for degree words is one of the first things I do. I weed out every 'very'. A 'very' will usually be the tell-tale sign of lazy writing. Wherever I find a 'very' in my writing, it's usually pointed at a weak adjective or adverb. And if I'm using weak adjectives or adverbs, it's not an editing job to improve things. I need to rewrite from scratch using concrete nouns and verbs that don't need to draw strength from adjectives or adverbs.
(I left in a 'very' in the second paragraph above because it's a necessary component of a figure of speech.)
Degree words and other forms of understated overstatement are the linguistic equivalent of the plastic microbeads they used to put in toothpaste and exfoliating skin products. Each microbead is, by definition, minuscule and insignificant. But the cumulative effect of microbeads is to persist and pollute. So it is with microbead overstatement. It's one of the reasons that LinkedIn is the platform that everyone loves to hate, even as they adopt the conventions of understated overstatement in their own posts. It's one of the reasons people switch off from reading RFP responses, only to go and write their own proposals in the same style.
At best this language is ignored and doesn't count. At worst it gets noticed and counts against you.
Microbeads have been banned from cosmetics. Microbeads are dead.