Why and How To Ditch the Jargon
Countless communicators I’ve coached, taught, or even interviewed as a reporter love their jargon. Internal language feels comforting I suppose as these words only you and your peers know of — almost like a secret code. Jargon can help us feel clever and informed. And many engineers, lawyers, and technologists I’ve interviewed or worked with believe jargon and other internal language makes them more efficient. Perhaps. Although from an audience perspective, I’m not sold.
From coaching, working as a communications and journalism professor, and even as a reporter where my job requires absorbing and making sense of others’ messages, I’ve found that jargon can:
- Require extra explaining to an external audience, which takes extra time. Anytime a subject I interviewed spoke in jargon, I had to ask multiple times for them to recast until I had something substantial I could use in my article. If they stayed fluffy, I used no quote at all.
- Prevent us from truly connecting with our audience because we’re remaining vague vs. specific, or overly complicated vs. simple and concrete, and guarded vs. open. Without the substance and clarity, our audience often feels closed off from us and lost.
- Frustrate our audience who’ve taken time out of their schedule to hear or read our message and wind up clueless as to what’s going on, which does not help us in business.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary offers the following synonyms for jargon: Obscure and often pretentious language marked by long words and general wordiness; technical terminology of a special activity or group; confused, unintelligible language. Have I said enough to discourage over-using jargon? If so, let’s flip to ways to replace jargon with the opposite: Clear and compelling language. Here lie five tips which work every time.
1/Ask Yourself: What am I Really Trying to Say?
When writing an informative or persuasive email or message where jargon prevails, pause to ask yourself the true intent. What’s the main thing you want and need your audience to know and/or do? I’d add to this step, ask yourself (with blameless discernment) why you choose to use jargon here over other language? [Sometimes the answer ties to a want to stay vague. But if so, why? Coach yourself or ask for coaching here.]
2/Read Your Message Aloud
You might try saying the message aloud — even recording as a voice note — and playing it back. News reporters do this often on deadline — and this works. As you read, notice what trips you up. (Often the sentence is too long. You’ve too many adverbs. Or, a buzz word breaks up the flow.)
3/Run a Crosscheck with an External Audience
To discern whether jargon and ambiguity prevails, try asking whether an elderly or very young person you know might understand. Alternatively, ask a friend who knows nothing about your work or business to read and ask for honest feedback on the clarity. If not, recast the sentence a few times until things get clearer.
4/Think About What Each Audience Cares About
This tip also helps with discerning which details to include or exclude from your message. For instance, if you’re writing to finance, any request or anything you inform them of must sit within that lens of what finance worries about the most. If writing to the tech team, focus on the technology aspect of the ask. Leave out the rest.
5/Comb Each Sentence and Apply a Cruel Edit
The only way forward to improve our message: Discern each sentence and recast until clearer. (Any time spent will pay dividends, I promise.) Watch for camouflaged verbs, a grammatically correct but cumbersome writing pattern which converts verbs to nouns and sounds jargon-y to your audience. (Solutions become solve. Reinforcement becomes reinforce. Management becomes manage, etc.) You can read more on camouflaged verbs (AKA fake verbs) here. Initially, your message may look naked and sparse without the jargon and other unnecessary language. But with the extra space, add in your helpful, audience-centered specifics.
I’m musing on jargon this week because I’m surprised and saddened to see how many bright, gifted professionals cling to jargon and other corporate speak when needing to explain their worth, either to a recruiter or to leadership when their team’s on the block. We’re only human. Jargon and business speak can seem proper, formal, and the correct or safe response. Many have absorbed in their training that jargon signals importance. (And in some rare cases, perhaps keeping the jargon intact is the best response because your audience wants and needs it.)
But what these same communicators tell me is jargon becomes the death of their message. Feedback they receive always sounds the same: Their audience feels confused and cannot tell someone else what they do. I hope from this week’s post, I’m offering some insider insights on the impact jargon can have and ways to counter, even remove it from our message. Consider jargon one spice in your cabinet: Use sparingly — and only if your guests like it.
Debbi Gardiner McCullough coaches and trains immigrant leaders to become more confident, concise, and mentally fit communicators. From Wisconsin, she owns and runs Hanging Rock Coaching and coaches worldwide with BetterUp.