Transform a name

‘That was so Rob Fordian’

In the December issue, I asked you to transform a name into a descriptor. (One of my clients, I mentioned, had just asked me to “Wylie-ize” part of her website.)

Here’s what you came up with:

Rob Fordian adj., describing short-sighted decision-making or immature behaviour by a public official, often accompanied by childish outbursts, binge drinking, admissions of smoking crack cocaine and/or politically incorrect remarks.

Rob Fordian is somewhat related both to “Palinesque” and the earlier “Dubba-yah,” both of which are more widely seen in the United States.

— Ken Anderson, vice president, Delta Media Inc.

Shermanize (after my own moniker, with a military “General Sherman” twist): To armor up language to combat the war against word boredom. Launch a surprise attack against blasé writing and Shermanize it! (Tank you.)

— Joan Sherman, owner, Joan Sherman Marketing Communications LLC

Volfed Recently I ran a business-writing course for an Australian bank. One of my students, Volf (pronounced “Rolf”), confessed that he loved writing in concise bullet points, but struggled to write flowing sentences. Another student said he had the opposite problem; he found it hard to write bullets.

So we practiced writing bullets. Whenever someone wrote some great bullets, we said they “Volfed” it! It was a running joke the whole day. People were telling each other to “Go Volf that copy!”

­— Paul Jones, CEO, Magneto Communications

And the winner is …

I’m attracted to Ken’s subject (and I’d love to see you use “Christie-ize” in a sentence, Ken). Paul’s story is fun and visual. But I’m going with Joan for the nice extended analogy.

Joan, watch your mailbox for a little wordplay gift from me.

And thank you all for playing!