remarkable Archives - Claxon Communication

This is the latest installment in our “Word of the Month” series to help non-profits make intentional language choices (while indulging our own word nerdery). Up this month? Remarkable.

A few months ago, we explained why we love the word remarkable so darn much. So much, in fact, that we’re happy to leave “awesome” in the dust for this striking and incredible word (that basically means striking and incredible! How about that?)

We’re guessing that you think your non-profit’s cause is pretty remarkable. Yet,1 you also likely continue to use the same stock of words, such as “awesome” and “great”. We looked to the Wordifier to show us how all of these words stack up:

The word remarkable stems from the French remarquer which means, “to take note of” or “worthy of notice”. Definitely something we all wish folks would do with our cause!

Okay, so now that we know why remarkable is so remarkable, what other words fall into this category?

Again, we turned to the Wordifier to advise us. (By the way, if you aren’t familiar with the Wordifier and why it’s a remarkable tool for choosing your non-profit’s words, check out this post). And since verbs are the superheroes of our sentences, let’s start there.

Here are a few remarkable verbs that the Wordifier gives us the green light on. I’ve bolded my personal favorites 🙂

Accelerate, activate, alleviate, anchor, broaden, collaborate, complement, confront, cultivate, deepen, defend, delight, elevate, eradicate, generate, ignite, illustrate, mobilize, motivate, nurture, rally, relieve, remedy, revitalize, shield, stabilize, steward, sustain, unite, uphold.

And here are some adjectives to spruce up your sentences:

Adept, apathetic, brilliant, colossal, deafening, diligent, disillusioned, endless, fierce, gentle, hopeful, hushed, illustrious, immense, lively, nimble, remarkable, rapid, resonant, somber, splendid, striking, swift, vigorous, zealous.

As you can probably tell from reading these words, they are not your standard, run-of-the-mills “awesomes” and “greats”. Each of these words paints a picture, gives a concrete feeling, and most importantly, are not overused by non-profits.

What are your favorite remarkable words? Tweet to us @ClaxonMarketing.

Remarkable how that red pencil stands out, isn’t it?

The word awesomeness is used quite liberally these days. As a fan of the word awesome, I’m happy about this trend.

But what about remarkableness?

When you hear the word ‘remarkable’, you might think of it as meaning striking or incredible or something along those lines. And you’d be right!

But striking and incredible to what end? It’s the “so what” part of the equation that matters in terms of getting more people more deeply engaged in your work.

Remarkable means “worthy of attention”. Or, as Seth Godin puts it so straight-forwardly, something worthy of remarking upon.

Your messaging needs to help people remark upon your remarkable work. That means it needs to be: concise, compelling, and–therefore and importantly–repeatable.

Remarkable messaging is remarkable because it gets people talking.

That’s why at Claxon, we teach you how to create remarkable messaging. Not awesome. Or amazing. Or strong. Or jazzy. But remarkable. Because we want to get hundreds or even thousands of people talking about your remarkableness–your work, your vision, your mission. The words need to match the work.

Unfortunately, Claxon’s research suggest that if you work for a nonprofit, your messaging likely isn’t remarkable. Likely, it’s kinda, well, lame. <insert big, sad sigh>

A quick, easy way to de-lame-ify your messaging is to use words that get the green light from the Wordifier. (The word remarkable gets the green light, by the way.)

Green-light words aren’t used by very many nonprofits, meaning they’re novel. Novelty lights up the brain. And a lit up brain means someone is paying attention to whatever lit it up. If you’re the one who lit it up, that’s you!

Nonprofits, foundations, and social enterprises have a whole lot of remarkableness going on. Simply by using remarkable words, you can expand the impact of that work even further. Remarkable!

***Want remarkable messaging? Claxon is here to help. Through consulting, speaking, and Claxon University, we can teach you loads of ways to create messaging as remarkable as your work.***

Tag: remarkable

July Word of the Month: Remarkable

Remarkableness