Is jargon killing your communities?

I have blogged before about keeping your writing as simple as possible. I pointed to the fact that over 80% of words used by English speakers come from a list of just 200 and that simple writing is, on the whole, good writing.

B2B writing, and technology writing in particular, is infested with jargon. From the traditional three letter acronym to the creation of meaningless new terms, it's everywhere. And it is killing the effectiveness of communications the world over.

In linguistic terms, jargon serves two purposes:

1. To create a allegiance and a sense of belonging to a small in-group (ie "It's OK, you're in our gang.")
2. To exclude those who fall outside that group (ie "Shove off, you're not in our gang.")

In these days of such intense focus on community building, you could argue that creating allegiance is a good thing. Maybe we should be using more jargon.

The problem, however, is that if you want to increase the size of your community, jargon creates a powerful barrier to entry. It makes people feel foolish for not understanding. And as a result they will not want to engage with you or your content.

Finally, as a little light relief, check out the video below. (I think I may have been in a meeting with him once.)