I hate the phrase ‘reach out’
Please stop using it
In recent years I’ve noticed the phrase “reaching out” crop up now and then. I hate it. I might be intolerant and grumpy, but please don’t “reach out” to me in a work or professional context.
There is nothing more annoying than receiving a sales email that says, “I am reaching out to you” to sell you something. No, you aren’t. Why can’t you just say “I am contacting you” or “I am selling X. Are you interested?”. To make it even more annoying, if you are contacting me at my work, I have no power to buy anything from you, and in ninety-nine percent of cases, what you are selling is also completely irrelevant to my role.
“I tried to reaching out to you but didn’t get a response.” No, you didn’t reach out to me. You asked a boring work-related question, and I haven’t had a chance to reply yet. Sometimes I’ve suggested to someone they need to contact a different department (because they do), and they have said, ‘thank you very much. I will reach out to them.’ It’s hard to put my finger on why it annoys me so much, but this could be phrased in so many different ways.
What does reach out mean? I consulted the Oxford English Dictionary, which has various meanings for reach. The main ones where ‘reach’ is associated with ‘out’ involve stretching your actual arm :
