Whether it’s IT or the army, cloud computing or the charity sector, every industry has its own language. That language is often completely baffling to outsiders, but it’s a useful shortcut for insiders.

In this chapter you will discover when jargon can help speed up communication, and when it actually makes communication more difficult. You will also discover why buzzwords are best avoided.

WHAT IS JARGON?

Jargon is language that’s specific to a particular group or profession, and is often expressed as acronyms. It serves a useful purpose: used correctly, it enables people to communicate more efficiently with each other.

Surgeons use medical jargon to communicate with their surgical team (and in some cases to avoid alarming the patient). Shops famously use code words to alert staff to unpleasantness in the aisles or bathrooms.

IT suppliers use jargon to describe particular products, services or concepts – the Internet of Things (IoT), for example, or Software as a Service (SaaS), or Cascading Style Sheets (CSS; used for website design).

Doctors use terms such as BMI (body mass index), NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), BP (blood pressure) and LDL (low density lipoproteins, aka ‘bad’ cholesterol). None of these acronyms are problematic if you’re a doctor, but they are if you don’t know what the acronyms mean.

Jargon is not evil. However, it can be used for evil. It can bamboozle instead of inform, it can exclude people rather than include them and it can make perfectly good pieces of writing completely impenetrable to anyone other than the author. It can also be used in an attempt to disguise the fact that somebody hasn’t got a clue what they’re on about.

As George Orwell stated (1946), we should never use ‘a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent’. There are exceptions, of course: if you’re talking SaaS with someone in the IT industry, then jargon’s fine. But a great deal of business writing is about communicating with people in different jobs, in different departments or with different areas of expertise, and jargon can get in the way of that.

There’s another kind of jargon to beware of. If you’ve ever played Business Bullshit Bingo in a dull meeting, you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about.

BAD BUZZ

Buzzwords are jargon that has become fashionable, and they’re often incredibly annoying. My pet hate is currently ‘surfaced’, to mean ‘found’ or ‘showed’, but there are plenty more. Get your bingo card ready and see how many of the following you can tick off in meetings:

I could go on for days.

There are two big problems with buzzwords. The first is that there are usually better, simpler words you can use instead, as the example of ‘surfaced’ demonstrates. But the bigger problem is that when everybody’s using them, they become clichéd and meaningless.

Let’s look at a few examples from the world of IT.

Best in class

Who decided the firm was the best, and who defined the class they’re best in?

Customer-focused

With very few exceptions – we’re thinking of a certain budget airline – every organisation with paying customers is customer-focused. If they aren’t, they won’t stay in business very long.

Exceed expectations

Exceeding expectations is the new ‘giving it 110 per cent’. If you’ve told someone you’re going to exceed their expectations, they’ll adjust their expectations accordingly, so the best you can do is meet their newly raised expectations.

Value-added solution provider

Every product or service is a solution to a problem or requirement, so that bit’s meaningless. And value-added is nonsense, because it implies you’re getting something for nothing. You’re not, as the supplier’s invoices will make abundantly clear.

Turnkey solution to deliver improved ROI

ROI – return on investment – is a key part of any investment: nobody buys a product that’s guaranteed to waste all their money. And turnkey solutions – services that you just have to turn a key or press a button to deploy – tend only to exist in marketers’ minds.

Imagineering, thought leadership, establishing new paradigms

If anybody uses any of these in a meeting it’s okay to hurl them through the nearest window.

WHY YOU SHOULD BANISH BUZZWORDS AND JUNK THE JARGON

There are several very good reasons to avoid buzzwords and jargon.

They’re a hindrance, not a help

If you don’t know the terms used, they’re a barrier to clear communication: nobody has the faintest idea what a manual geomorphological modification implement might be, but we all know what a spade is.

They can undo all your hard work

We often receive press releases and emails so packed with buzzwords and jargon that we genuinely can’t work out what they’re about. So we delete them, or throw them in the recycling.

They’re impersonal

If you Google ‘value-added solution provider’ you will get more than 73 million results. It’s like the climactic scene in Spartacus where everybody yells ‘I’m Spartacus’ so that the Roman general can’t find the man he wants. That’s a great idea if you’re trying to stop Roman centurions from stabbing somebody, but in business ‘we are exactly the same as everybody else’ is a terrible sales pitch.

They raise red flags

To a reader, a buzzword-packed message doesn’t necessarily say ‘here’s a message from someone who really knows their stuff’. It’s as likely to say ‘here’s a load of empty marketing nonsense’ or ‘here’s some more fashionable gibberish from management’. Neither option wins hearts and minds.

They waste words

Like clichés, buzzwords should be used sparingly or avoided altogether. There are usually better, shorter alternatives.

KEY TAKEAWAYS