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“We don’t call them tattoos any more,” says the chairman of Harley-Davidson, instead, "they are now dermatological graphics.” Really?
"For many communicators, the biggest obstacle to writing clearly isn’t that they don’t know how to get the gobbledygook out. It’s that their approvers love the gobbledygook.
So here’s a list of reasons to avoid jargon. Use it to convince your most incomprehensible colleagues that jargon not only hinders communication, it also hurts business."
Read the full article to find out more these reasons to avoid jargon:
- Makes your website harder to find and use.
- Reduces media coverage.
- Cuts back on friends, fans and followers.
- Makes readers work harder.
- Makes ideas harder to “see.”
- Suggests poor performance.
- Demonstrates your ignorance.
- Causes buzzword backlash.
“Never impose your language on people you wish to reach.”
— Abbie Hoffman
So very true. Here's a great example from the medical industry from a related article:
We say “sutures”; they say “stitches.” We say ” metastasize”; they say, “the cancer is spreading.” In fact, more than three-quarters of Americans didn’t know that “hemorrhage” meant “bleeding.”
If you want to reach your audience, use the language in their head, not yours. And a great time to also pitch plain language.