Humour

Walking the jargon talk

T A Balasubramanian on the need to avoid dull jargon and using clear language

“Duckbill Feathers, an arm of the famous IT consulting firm, Duckbill & Goose, has put us in charge of designing a new software program that is to identify—and possibly eradicate—intolerable levels of geeky jargon in IT communications media of all kinds. The goal is to make it easier for users—who are the victims in this case—to decipher what computer vendors, tech companies and consulting firms are trying to say in convoluted language—sometimes created deliberately,” says Parker Pinto, Chairman of Big Relief for Agonised and Vexed Organizations, known briefly to the world as ‘BRAVO.’

His words are directed at the resident BRAVO battalion under his care, which includes Verdana Verma, Chief Marketing Manager and Helvetica Reddy, Product Development Manager, and her project team.

“Since time immemorial, Boss,” says Verma solemnly, “Every trade and profession has developed its own jargon. It allows people in that line of business to discuss otherwise complex technical concepts in a sort of verbal shorthand. We, the people of BRAVO, should recognize this and let jargon be jargon.”

“Well, Verdana. Jargon has also allowed people since time-* immemorial to exclude those who are not in their line of business, usually for their own convenience and profit rather than that of their customers. What BRAVO stands for is freedom for ordinary people from this kind of artificial tyranny.”

“I am puzzled, Boss,” says Helvetica, with a frown. “The fact that a consulting firm comes up with a project for something like this is ironic, isn’t it? Consultants are the ones who introduce mysterious but important-sounding business terms that over time have a way of afflicting the general population. Isn’t Duckbill & Goose responsible for creating much of this jargon in the first place?”

“Ah, yes, I agree—it looks like they are shooting their own feet, at first glance,” says Pinto, with a smirk. “But I spoke to Garamond Gander, the new head of Duckbill Feathers, last week, and he freely admits that his firm has indeed helped foster confusing, indecipherable words like ‘seamless integration,’ ‘paradigm shift’ and ‘extensible repository.’ There is a misconception that consultants are great communicators. They are not. In some cases, they are the worst obfuscators. However, Duckbill & Goose seem to have decided that enough is enough, since they have seen their clients reeling in confusion. So Garamond is keen on releasing a tool to help technical IT documenters avoid dull jargon and use clear language—thereby earning the gratitude of victims, or users, everywhere.”

“That’s a good brief, Boss,” says Helvetica, cheerfully. “We have had it up to the eyebrows with meaningless terms like ‘re-purposeable,’ ‘value-added knowledge capital’ and ‘robust, leveragable mindshare.’ I think we are really well prepared for this one. What do you think, Verdana?”

“It seems like a good idea. So what do we call the product?” says Verma, focused on the marketing angle already.

“Well, let’s see—it has to be a pretty straightforward brand name that has a clear and original resonance to it,” says Pinto, waving with both hands. “Great brand names are designed to address one or more objectives. Sometimes they are conspicuous, and at other times, they are concealed, either deliberately, or through a false belief that their clarity is not important, or because of the brand maker’s inability to properly identify causal relationships between known facts. Sometimes, we fail to treat the root cause but treat symptoms instead. Sometimes we aggregate …”

“Stop, stop it right there, Boss,” says Reddy. “This is what we are fighting, remember? Endless waves of jargon?”

“Ah, true, I forget sometimes,” says Pinto, shaking his head in wonder. “So, what would you like to call the product, Helvetica?”

“Well, it should be anything but dull. Something that has a lot of punch in it.”

“How about Dull Fighter?” says Verma, eyes gleaming with hope.

“That’s too weak, Verdana,” says Pinto. “Besides, we need not bring the very word we want to fight into the brand name. It must be luminous, with an instant appeal to the users who will diligently download it by the millions…”

“Ah, here we go again,” sighs Reddy.

“What about Spark Plug?” says Verma, eagerly.

“Oh, come on Verdana … we cannot mix our metaphors too haphazardly.”

“I know what we can call it … Crystal Clear. That should make it exactly what it sounds like.”

“That is the best idea I have heard so far,” says Pinto. “So Crystal Clear it is. You know, Garamond posed me a challenge—instead of just talking about plain talk, we should design a tool to help people talk plainly. Now what do we pack into Crystal Clear, Helvetica?”

“Well, Boss, the software design is fairly straightforward. What we need is to throw in a dictionary of objectionable words and phrases. Jargon has a purpose—the terms are supposed to define what are otherwise very nebulous concepts, but they end up annoying people. Value-driven, mission-critical, underperformance and so on. If you recall, BRAVO had a contest last year and we got over 10,000 submissions. Some of the most detested were ‘leverage,’ ‘bandwidth,’ ‘touch base,’ ‘incentivize,’ ‘inoculate,’ ‘bleeding edge,’ ‘robust,’ ‘synergize’ and ‘envisioneer.’ ”

“Ah, we seem to be halfway into this project already, my dear.”

“Well, Boss, we do our research and we are ever ready to go. I could give you any number of examples—real and hypothetical—of pompous, arrogant, tedious, boring, and obfuscatory business communications.”

“What else did your research uncover?”

“Well, we found four of the commonest pitfalls that the jargon demon leads people into. The obscurity trap shows up when we want to sound smart and use jargon, acronyms, wordiness, and evasiveness, sacrificing clarity on the altar of pretentious brilliance. Then there is the anonymity trap, when you get too dependent on borrowed templates, tired clichés, and comatose conventions. There is the common hard-sell trap, when we over-promise, relentlessly accentuate the positive, and deny the existence of glaring flaws and screw-ups. And finally, the tedium trap. This is when we dump pre-packaged data on our hapless audiences and drone on in pointless generalizations.”

“And what will Crystal Clear look like?”

“I was coming to that, Boss. In a few months, Crystal Clear will be our epoch-defining software that will help you find and eliminate jargon forever in your business critical documents. It may look like a little toolbar with three buttons, but it will actually be much more. You will find an exclusive Obfuscation Index calculator that will allow you to see—in an actual window, on your PC display, live—just how bad your document can be if you let the jargon demon go unchecked.”

“Brilliant, Helvetica! So what you are saying is that, moving forwards, we, as BRAVO pioneers, are drawing up an optimistic scenario to take ownership of the flow in question to bring to fruition our jargon-eradicating solution, thus resulting in this journey’s culmination in a new category-matrix brand format. I hope this makes the situation clear, Verdana?”

“Whatever you say, Boss,” says Verma, scratching his head. “When do we start shipping?”

“Ah, supply chain management issues, eh, Verdana? You are right, we do not want to be faced with sensory profile reproducibility problems due to heterogeneous raw material, challenging the production of uniform quality.”