The 12 most persuasive words in the English language - or are they?

I use lots of words in my marketing, on my website and my blogs, in my emails, buyer/seller guides, and listing remarks. I'm all about words (except I'm all about photographs).

Anyway, when I read a recent blog post about the 12 English words that Yale University claimed were the most persuasive ones to use in advertising, I did some research (via Google, of course). I always like to know more about these studies and go to the source in case there is more information I can use.

To my surprise, I found that those words aren't the only ones on the list, and they weren't compiled as a result of a study by Yale. (Also, why wasn't "pizza" on the list?) The words have changed over the years, which is to be expected, but the number of years turns out to be quite large.

Various versions of this list have been around since the Sixties, according to a couple of contributors to the (possibly defunct) Language Log website. They posted their findings almost exactly four years ago.

Here's the link to Benjamin Zimmer's research on the (10/12/and counting) most persuasive words. Arnold Zwicky chimes in with an update. Finally, Benjamin Zimmer sums it up. This urban myth sure has legs!

So, it seems that there is no magic list of words after all that guarantees a quick sale. But the good news is that many of the articles from the Language Log website have been published as a book, Far from the Madding Gerund. Available on Amazon, it is already on my wish list.