I’m carrying on from yesterday’s post on decisioning, which generated some heated responses. The flamebait: “Is “decisioning” an acceptable word?” Among the responses:

@kemulholland: No, “decisioning” is not acceptable in any context except a Dilbert strip. Kill it with FIRE.

@KellyDrill: No no no no no.

@EastBeachEdit: Only if “choicing” is too.

@H_E_Sarah: Not just no, but *ALL-CAPS EXPLETIVE deleted* NO!

@kemulholland: Thanks for starting my day with the post on “decisioning” – I’m awake! My claws are sharp! Let the editing begin!

This morning, I heard from the other side, in a tweet from @intelligentform informing me that “decisioning”  is “actually a technical term in IT, particularly in regards to Decision Management and Business Rules.”

No further explanation was provided and I didn’t really find such a vague allusion satisfactory as an argument. We define technical terms on WhatIs.com. We try to avoid jargon as much as possible and at least mark it as such when we have to refer to it. So I did a little search for a definition of “decisioning” and here’s what I found, among the expected marketing gobbledygook:

From ZootWeb.com: 

Decisioning
The process of obtaining an automated decision based on pre-determined pass/fail criteria.

Although I’m sure there must be a better word, that definition at least differentiates decisioning from human decision-making  – decisioning is an automated decision-making process. I don’t like it, but I can understand why we might want to have a different word for when software makes a decision as opposed to when a human does.

The Free Dictionary allows it as a transitive verb:

tr.v. de·ci·sioned, de·ci·sion·ing, de·ci·sions  Sports

Ohhhhhhh… it comes from sports. I should have known.

I thought I’d run a Google search just to see how many hits “decisioning” gets: 410,000

First time I searched, though, I inadvertently entered Google’s predictive text-generated search term, “decisioning solutions.”

Apparently someone thought it was a cool term to use as their company name. Uh, no.

There were also generic references, as in this article:
Realtime decisioning solutions will be a differentiator for customer service

Anyway, if you’ve finished retching, I’ll give you the numbers for “decisioning solutions”: 41,300.

And you thought “decisioning” was as bad as it got.

Follow me on Twitter @tao_of_grammar

Which is correct?
Business activity monitoring provides an immediate real-time monitoring and ____________ capability.
a. decisioning
b. decision-making

Answer: b.

Explanation:

The answer is b! IN THE  NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, THE ANSWER IS B!  

That’s all the explanation you need. You know what “decision-making” means.  And “decisioning” is not a word.

I’m going to tell you a little secret …  When I’m looking for sentences to use for these questions, I often just plug a word into Google along with “site:techtarget.com” to find instances of use across our sister sites — not usually looking for errors, just instances and context.  I did that today, with “decisioning,” and was somewhat taken aback to find three pages of results.  Ugh.

Just because all your business friends are verbing every noun they come across doesn’t mean it’s cool. “Decisioning” is not a word. Stop using it. Stop and think — you’ll generally find that “decision-making” or “deciding” will work just fine.

Matt Wilson wrote about “decisioning” and  eight other completely pointless business words. Do read the article — if you can bear to.

Follow me on Twitter @tao_of_grammar

Our anti-virus ____ is available as a separate download.

a. product
b. solution

Answer: a.

Explanation:

If this is a separate application, it’s a product. There’s really no justification for referring to a single software product as a solution. (Even if it’s a combination of software products — we just call that a product suite, kids.)

We’ve been hating the word solution ever since it started appearing in marketing material. Is there any excuse for calling something a solution? I don’t think there’s any justification if it’s a single product or service, even if it does claim to solve a problem — don’t most products and services? However, if it’s a combination of products and services designed to solve a specific problem, go ahead. We might not like it but we’ve had to learn to live with it.

We even defined solution, just to try to come to terms with its right to exist. What it came down to was the fact that you’ve got to have a word for a combination of software and services designed to deal with a particular problem. Sounds like a solution me.

See more discussion of product vs. solution in this LinkedIn Q&A.

Follow me on Twitter @tao_of_grammar

Answer: a.

Explanation:
Commentate is a word and — much as I would like to — I can’t make it go away. However, let’s limit it to those uses where it might mean something slightly different from comment. According to the Random House Dictionary, commentate has been used since the eighteenth century as a synonym for annotate and since the middle of the 19th century to mean provide commentary, as a back formation from commentator.

They do, however, comment that commentate is considered jargon. Hear, hear!

So we’ve got:

Comment, meaning say something about something. And then, somewhere along the line, someone decided that a person who comments is a commentator. And THEN someone got the bright idea that what a commentator does is commentate. Apparently they didn’t realize there was a perfectly good word for that already.

I blame sports. All those commentators, commentating away about players giving 110 percent and so on.

What next? Commentation? Yes. Apparently that’s a word too. But that doesn’t mean we have to use it.

Let’s keep things simple, shall we? You’re 100 percent correct with the simplest forms of words. And there’s really no reason to aim for percentages over 100.

Follow us on Twitter @tao_of_grammar

Explanation:
Aggressive, in terms of pricing, is essentially a jargon synonym for competitive. Stick with the latter. Aggressive is often used to suggest fierceness but, really, what are you going to do — bite the other marketers?

There’s another term out there, less favored than aggressive: predatory. Predatory pricing is extremely low pricing intended to undercut competitors and drive them out of the business while also discouraging new entrants. There’s some argument over whether predatory pricing exists other than as a marketing myth.

Some might argue for using the terms to indicate the relative ruthlessness of the price cut: Predatory > Aggressive > Competitive.

However, most companies want to ensure a profit and will set a price that will maximize the chance of doing that. That’s competitive.

See Robert Malmrose’s post on why you should limit jargon for better communication.

Follow us on Twitter @tao_of_grammar