I will admit it doesn’t take overly that much before I get my whacking stick out. With regards to jargon I seem to have a one hand regularly reaching for my stick. I am pleased by the apparent move online to ditch the marketing infection and techie mind melting. One particular find in the past few months of Aspira Media’s "No jargon" website, cheered me during a particularly hard time with PR geek speak. It appears a regular line to be thrown at any designer or developer that they are talking techie. Perhaps worse than this accusation is when on top of this we become infected by the jargon virus and dribble out meaningless content to the website.
If anyone knows of the great animations of Creature comforts, then I can best describe my personal sum up of jargon as the tortoise that described the greatness of energy by labeling it "turn off and on able". This a rather simple example of jargon and the iceberg of idiot language only grows from there. To add to the already epidemic from marketing, there is further techie virus infection. It’s like some hideous 2 pronged jargon attack.
These days it has gotten to the point in my jargon allergy, that the mere slight indication from someone that I am either being techie or that I am using jargon; results in my either outbursting or bashing whatever they accused with my own stick. I have been making a conscious effort (not always successful as it can be harder to stop using jargon, than coming off some hard drug) to not use jargon. It is something I am trying to rid my life of. Of course, as I am not the copy producer on most of my work this is not always possible. I however, do try and stop it entering my own personal work. With regards to technical talk if it has to be used I try and define it, this is slightly harder. Finding the balance between patronising bracket explanations and actually giving usual information, is something I am working on getting right.
I think the web would be better without the jargon. I applaud anyone who gets the message over without using confusion and illusions of grandness through adjectives. If nothing else, I can attempt to keep my little corner of the web jargon free.
