When to Use Jargon in Technical Writing?

3 Reasons Why Everyone Should Use Jargon in Their Writing

Jargon is a powerful tool that can be used to express complex ideas in a few words. It is also an excellent way to communicate with your target audience.

Here are 5 reasons why you should use jargon in your writing:

1) It simplifies complicated concepts and ideas: Jargon helps to simplify complicated concepts and ideas by using words that the audience understands. This makes it easier for them to understand what you are trying to say.

2) It creates a sense of belonging: Using jargon creates a sense of belonging among those who use it. When people feel like they belong, they are more likely to stay loyal customers or clients.

3) It enables faster communication: Jargon speeds up communication because it uses less words than regular language which means less time to communicate the essential points in a conversation or article.

How to Safely Use Jargon Without Annoying Your Readers

In business, it’s important to be able to communicate with your colleagues and clients in a way that they can understand. This is where jargon comes into play. It is a type of language that is only understood by those who are familiar with it. But how do you know if you’re using jargon correctly? Well, if your reader understands what you’re talking about then you’re probably using the right amount of jargon.

Jargon can be used in many different ways, but one of the most common ways is when we use acronyms or abbreviations. It may seem like this would be the best way to use it because readers will understand what we’re talking about and we don’t have to keep repeating ourselves over and over again.

BUT this isn’t always the case because acronyms can be misleading and can cause confusion to those who are not conversant with the field of study.

What are the Common Types of Jargon?

There are many different types of jargon. The most common are acronyms, which are abbreviations that can be hard to understand for someone who is not in the same industry.

Some other types are buzzwords. These words have become popular in recent years because they have been used so much in marketing campaigns and social media that they have become a part of everyday language.

We should be careful with these words because it can be easy to get lost in all the terminology, and it is very difficult for people outside the industry to understand what these words mean.

The most common types of jargon include:

– acronyms (e.g., ASAP, ASAP)

– abbreviations (e.g., H2O)

– technical terms (e.g., CPM, PPC)

– specialized words and phrases (e.g., “touch base”)

– buzzwords (e.g., “thinking outside the box”)

But is this rule true ALL the time, unconditionally? No, it’s not.

There are actually times when you’d better use jargon if you want to be understood. Otherwise you’ll be stamped as an “amateur” and not taken seriously.

Take the term “deconflicting”, for example.

If the context is scheduling your day and increasing your personal productivity, “deconflicting” is a piece of painful jargon that you should avoid.

Instead of saying “You have to deconflict your priorities to finish your homework on time” it’d be a hundred times more preferable to say: “Assign different priorities to your conflicting action items to finish your homework on time.”

But imagine you are writing a manual for air traffic controllers… a totally different context.

For air traffic controllers “deconflicting” is a very real and important concept and ALL controllers refer to that process as “deconflicting” and nothing else.

That’s their common language and lingo.

If instead of “deconflicting” you say “making sure the airplanes have distinct flight paths so that they don’t crash into each other” in order not use “jargon,” they’ll only laugh at you!

In such special contexts, jargon will help you establish your credentials right away as an “insider” and will help you communicate your ideas much more rapidly, with authority. That would help not only you as a professional technical writer but your audience as well since they can concentrate on the content of your copy rather than get distracted by the everyday language you’re using.