Now They're Just Making Up Words - Is There Anything They Won't Try?

I was watching NFL Live last night on ESPN (what can I say - I needed some football) when the World Wide Leader ran out a segment on the "Most Impactful" rookies for next year. It was right on the screen - "Most Impactful" - as they were blabbering about Calvin Johnson and some 'backer from the U that I'd never heard of.

All the while, I'm thinking - is "impactful" even a word? Are they just making up words at this point, like they did with "spurtability"? Is this what happens when NFL Live is on in July? Are the real editors with college degrees over at Baseball Tonight, or on vacation, and NFL Live is left with the nitwits or the interns?

Curious, I Googled it (is "Googled" a word? probably not) and here's some of the fun stuff I came up with:

Paul Brians, a professor of English at Washington State University, cites the use of the word impactful as one of his common list of errors in the English language:

Many people in business and education like to speak of things that have an impact as being “impactful,” but this term does not appear in most dictionaries and is not well thought of by traditionalists. Use “influential” or “effective” instead.

This from an ABC News Radio story about the word "impactful":

this ugly and unnecessary word appears to have been coined by American journalists. And we should leave it where we found it – in the rubbish bin of American journalism.

Ooooookay. Must have been a British report. Rubbish, indeed.

I discovered that people actually blame the advertising agencies for making up this word. Which makes sense, since ESPN is all about cross-marketing and advertising these days, rather than sports.