Do you know what that word means?
This coming Tuesday, 24 October, 2023 is ‘Drop the Jargon Day.’
How many words do you hear or read which you may not be sure of the meaning? Or are only known to some people who have worked in that area for a long time or they have specialised knowledge due to their training and expertise?
You may know some meanings of a word or phrase, but the speaker or writer assumes you know all the depths of its meaning.
Look at your job title. How much jargon is in it? You may be a systems administrator or a service manager or consumer advocate. Remove the jargon and work out what everyday words you can use to write a new job title for what you do?
Find out how jargon based your name can be with this fun meme. Take the first letter of your first name, eg: John and match it to the jargon word for ‘J’. Take the first letter of your last name and do the same. Mine would be ‘C-suite Bandwidth’. Try it with other letters of your name.
Drop the Jargon Day focuses on words in the health environment, but it is needed wherever we go. It has been led by Cultural Ethnicity and Health in Victoria.
Let’s bin all that complexity and start to communicate more effectively with each other.
Did you know 44% of the adult Australian population, and 60% of people, when it is about health information, do not have the literacy to manage a range of day to day reading tasks?
In our award winning work in developing Easy English we always remove the jargon and complex language that readers do not need . Check out some of our health examples of Easy English here. Watch out for some projects about to be released on Cerebral Palsy and on Your yearly health assessment for people with intellectual disability.
All content needs to be reviewed and have jargon binned or needs to be better explained. Lets think about the term ‘domestic violence.’ You may have an understanding that it is about when your partner may hit you or threaten to hit you or hurt you. In fact, it is far more. It can be about being followed, or not being able to choose your friends or having no control over your money or the words the person says. Is it about your current partner? But can it also be about ongoing behaviour of your ex-partner. These resources developed in Easy English to help people do a survey, help explain what the term ‘domestic violence’ can mean. This is not binning terms, but making sure we all know what it really does mean too. https://accesseasyenglish.com.au/awava-project/
When communicating with the public it is essential that all jargon is removed from our spoken and written communication. Chat to us about how we can assist you to create jargon free content for all and in particular the many people in all our communities who have low literacy.
Look out for our social media posts on Tuesday and think about how you can start to #DropTheJargon.
Here are some ideas for your team to try.
· Share your jargon pet peeves
· What’s some jargon from your industry nobody else understands?
· What’s some outdated jargon or slang you still use?
Cathy Basterfield
Founder Access Easy English
Consultant — Speech Pathologist
Telephone: 0466 579 855
Email: cathy@accesseasyenglish.com.au
Website: https://accesseasyenglish.com.au/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/accesseasyenglish
LinkedIn: Cathy Basterfield
Twitter: @accesseasyengli
