Is jargon irreplaceable?
The overuse of jargon can also lead to an inflated and pompous tone. It can do so because jargon often implies that the writer's mind is simply idling; the writer is not truly concentrated on the ideas he or she is presenting.
You should, nevertheless, be aware that jargon comes in at least two flavors. The first, the necessary technical language of a trade, will be irreplaceable; to redefine these expressions into simpler terms would waste the reader's and the writer's time. Seasonality might, for instance, be necessary technical language in financial analysis, as initialize might be needed in writing a functional specification, and in camera might be required in a legal paper. When using technical language, you need consider only whether the reader shares the same technical language. If the reader does not, either define the technical terms or remove them.
But many of the special-sounding expressions that adhere to the vocabularies of professionals have no particular technical content, yet will be jargon. These expressions are easily replaceable and sound inflated. Such phrases include impacted, the subject company, functionality, roll out, and aforementioned. Phrases like these quickly sap the sincerity of the writing; their blandness reeks of manufactured language, the sort of language never uttered when actual thinking is proceeding.
The broad business community has a jargon of its own, made up mostly of imprecisely used verbs. As a consequence, when a business person wants to be informed or notified, he or she may use the word advise, though no counseling is involved. Or when searching for discussed or evaluated, that business person might use a verb meaning to look at something twice: review. Or when wanting to suggest that someone said, hinted, intimated, implied, or suggested something, a business writer might write indicated, a word having little to do with speech. Reserve such words for their precise uses.
The temptations of jargon will be many; some will be irresistible. We do all want to sound like we belong on the inside, to be seen as professional, to keep up with the new--but the reader's understanding is little advanced by jargon. So we may use jargon more for self-regard than for communication, and ultimately our readers comprehend this. When they do, the communication process suffers.
==>Guidelines ==>Inflation