100 ways to improve your writing - Gary Provost 2019

Avoid jargon
Twelve ways to avoid making your reader hate you

Jargon refers to language used by a specific profession or group as a kind of shorthand or code. Police officers, venture capitalists, sailors, surgeons, surfers, and the military all have their own jargon, which might be slang (hang ten), acronyms (APB), or simply words they use differently than outsiders do (grunt).

Jargon can also be defined as meaningless language—empty phrases such as “in point of fact”—or language that is pretentious or verbose.

We’re all guilty. I use jargon. You use jargon. From time to time every person utters something that is without meaning or doesn’t mean what he or she wants it to mean. In spoken language this is forgivable; after all, when we speak, we’re all working in the first draft. But writers should certainly be able to keep jargon under control. If it is necessary to use technical jargon, try to use it in a way that makes your meaning clear in context, or include a brief explanation.

Because I can’t possibly cover thoroughly the subject of jargon here, I recommend three books: Jargon: Its Uses and Abuses by Walter Nash, On Language by Noam Chomsky, and The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker.

Here’s a tip: If you can make a man sound like an idiot simply by quoting him, he’s probably using pretentious jargon.