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May 24, 2006

In the early 1970s, comedian George Carlin codified for all-time the "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" in one of his routines. Times have changed, of course, to the point where one of those words was repeated an intentionally numbing number of times on the South Park episode titled "It Hits the Fan."

Thanks to spammers trying to wheedle their way into our inboxes and hearts, they have overused a large number of everyday words whose usage in a harmless email message might land that message in the recipient's spam crapper. Or at least the message might gain some points on its spam score if it goes through content-based spam filtering. This, according to a Direct Magazine article.

What are those magic words? Here's a sampler, according to Email Reaction:

acceptance, accordingly, beneficiary, beverage, certified, dainty, deceased, degrees, deposit, depression, diagnostics, dollars, dormant, enlarge, foreigner, lenders, loan, lottery, maintained, medication, medium, Netherlands, Nigeria, organization, paste, percent, perpetual, presently, reciprocal, replicas, reseller, sincerely, somebody, southwestern, statements, Swiss, tablets, trademarks, transaction, urgent, valuables, verify, warehouse, watches

Makes ya just want to exit your email program, and pick up the phone.