Chapter 9 Use real words
In 2014, Richard Branson wrote a LinkedIn article titled ‘Why you should do away with jargon'. His opening paragraph read,
“ Some people love speaking in jargon, using fancy words and turning everything into acronyms. Personally, I find this simply slows things down, confuses people and causes them to lose interest. It's far better to use a simple term and commonplace words that everyone will understand, rather than showing off and annoying your audience.
In the article he relayed his experience of not understanding financial jargon for years. He explained that his son's production company was producing a collection of short videos to explain finance in an uncomplicated way — how cool is that?! (And how well-needed.)
You don't have to look far to find examples of everyday people making a conscious effort to use real words and rid the world of bad communication.
As George Orwell included in his six rules for writing English, ‘Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent'.
When a biscuit is not a biscuit
Kate Hughes is Chief Audit and Risk Officer at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (more commonly known throughout Australia as the acronym RMIT.)
Kate had spent the vast majority of her career in the corporate sector, before moving to one of Australia's largest universities.
The problem was that when Kate first started this new role in a different industry, she was confronted ...