Partner Article

Hunt the Jargon

With Simon Raybould of Curved Vision

I mentioned last time that I’d be looking at how to spot your own use of jargon. It’s not as easy as it sounds because jargon, almost by definition, is something that slips into your vocabulary and becomes part of our everyday use and experience. That means it’s important we get an outsider’s view to help us.

Here are a few of the ways to manage that.

Try your presentation out on a friend or partner who doesn’t know much about what you do. This is the obvious one and it’s often the best but, to be honest, if you do this too much you’ll not have many friends left who don’t hide when they see you. I recommend you leave it as a last resort, for major presentations - and even then only after you’ve used some of the techniques below.

Use your software. Your word processor probably has a grammar and spell checker. Try it. Okay, it’s going to throw up a lot of stuff you want to ignore, I grant you, but it’s probably worthwhile putting up with that for the sake of a fresh pair of eyes, albeit electronic. If your computer doesn’t recognise a word, chances are that it’s not a ‘real’ word. That means it’s a misspelling, jargon, or a very unusual word indeed. Whichever of these it is, it needs to be looked at. Hard.

Another approach, of course, is to do it yourself. The best way to do this is to create some form of template so that you can only see a single word at a time. Consider cutting a hole in a sheet of card. That way you’re forced to consider each word individually - and don’t rush it either. Ten minutes at a time is plenty - little and often is the way to stay fresh on this one.

For important presentations it’s worthwhile thinking about using a professional copywriter. Many of them won’t have a clue about presentation design and will try to change the way your slides are presented (which might be worth listening to, even if you don’t agree with them in the end - at least it’s a fresh pair of eyes) but they will, at the very least challenge you about your jargon. If nothing else, they’re going to need to ask you what it means.

So there they are - four quick and easy ways to spot the stuff that shouldn’t be there. Of course, if your presentation is only to be received by your immediate team - the people who devised the jargon with you - then you’re fine and don’t need to work quite so hard.

But it’s always worth checking!

Good luck and in the meantime if you’ve got any horror stories, I’m always interested in hearing them! :) sme@curved-vision.co.uk.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .