Jargon

“There’s probably some of you in here that have taken the technical writing course,” a course required for the majors in the room.

I looked around and saw a few nod their heads

“You’re taught in it to avoid jargon. Now this is one of the times that you can’t really avoid jargon.”

I flashed back to my statistics class last year.

“So why do we have to phrase it that way?”

“First of all, it’s the clearest way of explaining it that isn’t incorrect, and second of all, if you give an incorrect explanation, it can get you into legal trouble.”

Back here in Stat 201, the teacher went on to explain the common errors people make that are wrong.

“Now before I explain how you’re supposed to explain this, here’s some common errors people make…”

I believe there is a language we enjoy using to prove we are knowledgeable on a subject. Instead of baptism, we say waters of Judah. Instead of the Messiah, we say the stem of Jesse. This isn’t necessarily bad. It’s the principle of “milk before meat,” and applies to everything we learn.

We must know our audience. We may look smart when we say something like “integrate the module into the GUI subroutine,” but when we say instead we’re just making computer programs that send numbers and variables to each other, we may be oversimplifying, but it’s very necessary. In this case, knowing our audience does not only tell us whether we need point-first or point-last statements, but also whether we need a lengthy exposition in the middle to explain the foreign terminology we are about to use.

Possibly the most difficult element is that we have to do this all while keeping the reader interested. If successful, and we explain a revolutionary new tool in the required terminology, we can find ourselves with a devoted audience, but if there is a disconnect in communication, the audience will not be at fault for their ignorance.

We will soon not be strangers to this disconnect. A friend of my brother’s worked in an internship at Honeywell, claiming he didn’t understand all the acronyms and language until 6 month’s time. My sister-in-law, a middle-school English teacher, said that just the acronyms used for paperwork and reports took a few weeks to learn.

Advice to everyone in just about every field of study: know your audience, and simplify accordingly.