Let's pretend I'm your editor for a second. Done laughing? Okay, how about we talk seriously about cliché and weak, meaningless words and the way they diminish the impact, entertainment value and clarity of games journalism. One of my favorite editors absolutely hated the word "get." He forbade us from using it because there were so many other verbs you could wield to make your copy that much more colorful. In forcing us to brainstorm linguistic end-runs around the "get" problem my editor encouraged his entire staff to re-examine all the mundane phrases we use everyday. We became better writers and our stories, in turn, were more effective. So in the interest of improving games journalism in 2009 let's start by banning the following words and phrases:

Hype: This shortening of "hyperbole" was used quite flagrantly this year, especially when discussing the marketing and reception of games like Spore and Grand Theft Auto IV. But what, exactly, is hype? The word is imprecise, referring to a sort of nebulous enthusiasm. There's a negative connotation, suggesting that we should all listen to the wise words of Flavor Flav and avoid believing said hype. But I feel like we're missing a vital part of the discussion by piling the feelings of fans, the impressions of writers and the come-ons of marketers under one umbrella. Next year if you feel like a game has been hyped, look closer, determine what out there has been hyperbolic and put your finger on it.

Title: We have a big problem in video games. We've only got one or two reliable words to describe the stuff we write about: "Game" and "video game." We have few words like "flick," "tune" or "tome" that act as colorful secondary descriptors of the media we discuss. That's why so many games writers resort to the word "title" to describe a game. But this term feels businesslike and sterile, like referring to our burgeoning form as widgets or units. Let's leave this kind of vocabulary for the banner hanging outside of Blockbuster and be more creative.

Meh: This one goes out to the bloggers. I'm fine with the use of slang and casual writing, but this word irks me something fierce. It's a newfangled interjection meant to express Seinfeld levels of disinterest and for that reason alone it's a bit interesting. But when you say "meh," you say nothing. If that's your point, that there's nothing worth saying, either don't bother or come up with a more original way of not saying it.

AAA: I'm not entirely sure what makes a triple-A game deserving of the label. If it's budget, why not just call a spade a spade? If it's studio pedigree why not adopt the major/minor distinction? But regardless of the vetting process for such games it's a dull, hyperbolic (where are all the double-A and single-A games?) descriptor that better writers should avoid. Leave this acronym for the press flaks.

Graphics: There's a reason why we laugh at that commercial for Westwood College where the half-stoned game tester talks about "tightening up the graphics." It's because people who use the word "graphics" to describe the settings, art, animation, design and direction of video games sound like they're eleven years old.

Mixed Bag: What exactly are we talking about when we call something a mixed bag? The phrase refers to something like a mixed bag of nuts – a sack of snacks where you may expect to find peanuts and cashews. But when most writers use the modern idiom "mixed bag," they're trying to express a sampling of the bad and the good – like a mixed bag of nuts that has bugs and bits of dog hair mixed in with the peanuts. So in addition to using an outdated turn of phrase (who buys nuts by the bag anyway?) we've also managed to break the metaphor, reducing it to a platitude. Nice going, mixed baggers.

WoW, COD4, GH:WT, etc.: Want to make sure that a civilian reader has absolutely no idea what you're talking about? Fill your stories with abbreviations of game titles. It's bad enough that we've reduced entire genres to indecipherable three-letter abbreviations. But the shortening of games titles has got to stop. Are the ten letters in Guitar Hero really going to blow your headline? Is God of War III really too long to type? If you're out to prevent repeating the title of the game a dozen times during your piece that's a great impulse. Abbreviations aren't the solution. Instead find new and imaginative ways to describe Gears of War 2, such as "Cliff Bleszinski's latest" or "the continuing adventures of Marcus Fenix" to mix things up.

Kiddy & Kiddish: These words are holdovers from the playground console wars, when proponents of more mature games deemed the cartoon stylings on Nintendo too child-like for more mature (read: just barely juvenile) gamers. The fact that these derogatory (and vaguely ungrammatical) words occasionally pop up in a review or preview underlines, uncomfortably, that we're an enthusiast press.

And just so I'm not ending the year on a sour note I'll leave you with a handful of words I'd like to see more of in the games writing of 2009. Please feel free to use the following ten-cent words to your heart's content: post-mortem, taxonomy, symposium, grok, round-table, game designer, developer, texture artist, tester, blockbuster, NeoGAF-crasher, bomb, mega-budget, micro-budget, freak-out, color palette, environment, scenery, atmosphere, animation, eye-candy, diversion, actioner, adventure, cartoon, symbolic, life-like, realism, surreal and psychedelic.

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Media Coverage is an opinion column. The opinions expressed in this column are solely the opinions of the columnist and are not necessarily the opinions of GameDaily.com.