[HN Gopher] A simple guide on words to avoid in government
___________________________________________________________________
A simple guide on words to avoid in government
Author : open-source-ux
Score : 240 points
Date : 2022-12-23 11:11 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (civilservice.blog.gov.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (civilservice.blog.gov.uk)
| billfruit wrote:
| The style guide linked in the document seems to refer to the "6
| types of British Nationalities", but fails to list them out.
|
| Of the 6, the most quirky seems the "British Subject":
|
| "You became a British subject on 1 January 1983 if, until then,
| you were either:
|
| a British subject without citizenship, which means you were a
| British subject on 31 December 1948 who did not become a citizen
| of the UK and Colonies, a Commonwealth country, Pakistan or
| Ireland a person who had been a citizen of Ireland on 31 December
| 1948 and had made a claim to remain a British subject.
|
| You also became a British subject on 1 January 1983 if you were a
| woman who registered as a British subject on the basis of your
| marriage to a man in one of these categories. "
| draw_down wrote:
| [dead]
| sjducb wrote:
| I think this ignores the reason jargon exists. -- To demonstrate
| that the speaker is part of the "in" crowd.
|
| If you stop using jargon then people assume you don't know what
| you're talking about. This affect is real. Your precieved
| credibility goes way down when you stop speaking in jargon.
|
| It's the reason that the speaker used all of the tech jargon
| (launching a website). If they didn't do that then we would think
| they didn't know about websites.
| oliwarner wrote:
| It does link directly to the Plain English examples on
| "government jargon". These are mostly written in legalese.
|
| It does not mean to avoid all jargon, it means you should _say
| what you mean_ , not say things in a way to satisfy 300 year
| old rules on jurisprudence for the statute books.
|
| http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/campaigning/examples/governmen...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Jargon adds context in a community.
|
| "Tubular" was a term of art for surfers before the Teenage
| Mutant Ninja Turtles showed up.
|
| It's a normal and natural thing to develop. But it's also
| normal and good to have communications professionals mandate
| editorial standards so that people can understand outside of
| the niche.
| lozenge wrote:
| Luckily, gov.uk has credibility without resorting to jargon.
| Because it's got a special TLD and a crown icon on every page.
| And it's the government.
| leokennis wrote:
| I hate how often I need to use words like "stack", "anti
| pattern" and "key value store" so people believe I know my
| stuff. I feel like a tech bro.
| yulker wrote:
| What other terminology might better describe those concepts?
| These seem to be technical terms that describe specific
| things. Unless using them in an unrelated context (e.g.
| describing your pantry as a key value store), these seem
| relevant.
| leokennis wrote:
| * stack - (depending on context): server, operating system
| etc.
|
| * anti pattern - bad design
|
| * key value store - (almost always) database
| zeroxfe wrote:
| This is kinda making a pretty good case for the jargon.
| :-)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > stack - (depending on context): server, operating
| system etc
|
| On that context, "stack" means exactly the set of all
| those things and a few more. You can't replace it by any
| one of those things. The alternative is enumerating all
| of them (that's what people used to do), what is bad
| (that's why people coined the "stack" term).
|
| > anti pattern - bad design
|
| Hum... Now are you talking about software architecture,
| UI, UX, communications design? Your replacement is
| confusing.
|
| > key value store - (almost always) database
|
| It is an specific kind of database, with performance
| characteristics that are completely different from the
| relational databases that the "database" word alone
| implies.
| combatentropy wrote:
| First of all, that's false. Time and again, experts who can
| explain complicated concepts with everyday words seem smarter,
| not dumber. To wit: Richard Feynman, Steven Pinker, C.S. Lewis.
|
| Second, even if it were true, that would be all the more reason
| to stop it, because the reason is bad. It is selfish, at the
| expense of others. If you make things harder for people so that
| life is easier for you, then you are by definition evil.
|
| "Short words are best, and old words are best of all." ---
| Winston Churchill
| jlg23 wrote:
| > If you stop using jargon then people assume you don't know
| what you're talking about. This affect is real. Your precieved
| credibility goes way down when you stop speaking in jargon.
|
| So let them learn it the hard way. If people prefer to trust
| someone they don't understand over making the effort to
| understand what they are being told in simple words, they only
| reveal their own ignorance.
|
| I once was reprimanded in school (in absentia), for choosing my
| words to impress and not to be understood. That was probably
| the most important lesson I ever received.
|
| But I think you are wrong about why jargon exists: Jargon lets
| us express complex ideas in a very compressed way, because,
| among peers, we understand exactly what is being said. It is
| just detrimental to effective communication with people outside
| our area of expertise. So yes, sometimes "NOP sledge" says it
| all, while with a different audience one might just skip that
| subject...
| gumby wrote:
| > I think this ignores the reason jargon exists. -- To
| demonstrate that the speaker is part of the "in" crowd.
|
| That's unnecessarily cynical. It certainly can give off that
| impression. But it is also a shortcut for people who work
| together in a specific domain to be more precise (or more
| general) than would be implied by non-jargon speech. So to me
| those things in the sky are just clouds, but to a meteorologist
| they might be stratocumulus or cirrus.
|
| Another case, a similar one, is the stickiness of obsolete
| language in a certain domains. I've never used the word
| "cloture" in a sentence,* but to use it is faster for those who
| need it than to spell it out. In law, some obsolete words not
| only carry specific meaning but can call back to existing case
| law.
|
| For HN, CPU is a good example, being an old word whose precise
| meaning is quite fluid (used to be literally the cabinet with
| merely the ALU and some registers; instruction decode was just
| how it was wired together) and so is jargon too.
|
| * until writing that sentence of course.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| CPU is short for Central Processing Unit, and is often used
| to contrast with GPU, which is short for Graphics Processing
| Unit, which is often used for ML, which is short for Machine
| Learning, even though ML isn't just Graphics, and TPU is
| short for Tensor Processing Unit, which is also used for
| Machine Learning.
|
| Also, C-3PO is short for See-Threepio, and is used for
| interacting with organics, while R2D2 is short for Artoo-
| Detoo, which is used for interacting with digitals and
| arguing with C-3P0, while TWKE-4 is short for Twiki, which is
| used for saying BDBDBDBD, which is short for Bee Dee Bee Dee
| Bee Dee Bee Dee.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeCb_abgig0
| gumby wrote:
| Precisely: this gets annoying really quickly. Hence jargon.
| tuatoru wrote:
| You didn't use it, you mentioned it.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinct
| io...
| dtgriscom wrote:
| He used it as an example.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I agree. The linked examples of jargon in the article feel
| more like precise wording chosen to reflect legal or
| contractual obligations. Not great for casual communication,
| but when you start talking about people's job duties and
| working hours then precision is important.
|
| Always consider your audience. If you're writing casual
| communications for a mixed audience, ditch the jargon and use
| simple words.
|
| If you're speaking to professional peers on business matters,
| use the precise language. Don't unnecessarily complicate
| sentences or use complex words when simple words are equally
| effective, though.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| You are describing technical vocabulary, not jargon.
|
| Jargon has a slightly pejorative sense, just like in the
| article.
|
| The article does not say, "Do not use the correct words for
| your discipline." It says, "Do not use meaningless words or
| overdramatize."
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Jargon means exactly the same as "technical vocabulary",
| but without carrying the connotation that requires their
| area of interest to be "technical".
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Jargon has a slightly pejorative sense, just like in the
| article_
|
| Not necessarily. Jargon is not technical. But it _is_ an
| emergent feature of language in semi-isolated groups.
| Things get nicknamed, inside jokes stick, and from the
| outside it looks performative while inside it's quite
| natural. That it subsequently often takes on a performative
| element, in particular by new comers, _is_ an in-group
| mechanism, but it's not always useless as a signalling
| mechanism. There even seems to be an in-built sense of
| disgust with respect to overly performative jargon that
| keeps the system in check most of the time.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Jargon is an old file of hacker culture slang definitions
| from the MIT-AI Lab "HUMOR;" directory, including the word
| "hacker" itself, that that Eric S Raymond hijacked and
| redefined to spread his bat-shit crazy political ideology.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20382529
| yencabulator wrote:
| Jargon is a word derived from Old French, and has been
| used in its current meaning since at least 1849. ESR may
| have listed some examples of jargon, but he for damn sure
| didn't get to define it.
| wwalexander wrote:
| The response to your comment seems to be negative, but I
| personally think it's accurate and on-topic, including
| the note about ESR and his ideology.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Your precieved credibility goes way down when you stop
| speaking in jargon.
|
| I don't agree - unless you're using jargon to conceal your
| intrinsic lack of credibility.
|
| If you really understand a thing, then you can explain it in
| plain words. The use of jargon serves to conceal from both the
| listener and the speaker that the explanation is shallow. It's
| like a "code smell".
| sjducb wrote:
| I wish that were true. The problem is that lots of things are
| hard to understand and there's a good chance you're listener
| won't get it.
| roflc0ptic wrote:
| They're making a general statement about perception. This is
| markedly true and an important human dynamic. There's even a
| meme that plays on this: "How do you do, fellow kids?"
|
| The linguistic patterns (including jargon but also more than
| that) peg us as part of various subcultures, as educated or
| not, rich or not, from Florida or not. I was interviewing
| with some random dude who went to Duke and he said "You
| remind me of my college roommate." I'd known this dude for 15
| minutes: what else could there be, really, other than
| linguistic cues? Naturally, I was offered the job.
|
| Jargon _can_ mean that the explanation is shallow; it just
| depends on which jargon employed when. Take any jargon filled
| non-sense - you can say equally shallow things entirely
| without the jargon!
| ohbtvz wrote:
| This is not the reason jargon exists. What made you say that?
|
| > It's the reason that the speaker used all of the tech jargon
| (launching a website). If they didn't do that then we would
| think they didn't know about websites.
|
| To "launch" something is jargon?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > To "launch" something is jargon?
|
| Not if it's a boat or a plane. Otherwise, probably yes.
| krona wrote:
| > This is not the reason jargon exists. What made you say
| that?
|
| Steven Pinker in The Language Instinct.
| ohbtvz wrote:
| I don't have the book at hand. Do you have a more precise
| quote?
| sjducb wrote:
| What is the real reason that jargon exists?
|
| Ostensibly it's to increase precision and allow experts to
| communicate quickly with each other. However that
| explaination can't explain phrases like "Ring-fence", "Let's
| take this offline", "360 degree feedback". All of those
| phrases have better simple English translations.
| ohbtvz wrote:
| Your examples are not jargon, they're metaphors.
|
| Jargon exists because specialists in a subject want to
| communicate quickly among themselves, instead of
| paraphrasing all the time. I'm a mathematician, if I had to
| use plain-English words instead of jargon in my papers, I
| would go insane. But my papers aren't meant for the general
| public (although they're welcome to read them), they're
| meant for a specialist audience. This is not the case of
| government websites.
| sjducb wrote:
| Your not recognising jargon from other fields. All of
| those phrases have precise technical definitions.
|
| For example "360 degree feedback" is when a manager's
| direct report is asked to give feedback about their
| manager. In other words you give feedback about your
| boss, often to your boss.
|
| It doesn't really make sense as a phrase or metaphor. It
| should really be 180 degree feedback because if you turn
| 360 degrees you're facing the same way that you
| started.... But that makes it even better jargon. It
| signals that you've been on some management training
| courses.
| yulker wrote:
| 360 usually involves feedback from peers as well, hence
| 360.
| sjducb wrote:
| Makes sense, also I'm now sure that you'd be a good
| manager because you've demonstrated a deep understanding
| of the jargon.
| incone123 wrote:
| Some government websites are intended for a specialist
| audience. I think it's great that the site for paying my
| car tax is very simple but I would not expect the
| instructions for using a government data API to be
| written in the same way.
| ohbtvz wrote:
| I don't think anyone is saying otherwise. It's clear that
| the discussion is about general public-facing government
| websites. Something for which the intended audience is a
| large portion of the population.
| bhouston wrote:
| > To demonstrate that the speaker is part of the "in" crowd.
|
| I think the point of removing jargon is to remove the "in" and
| "out" crowds as much as possible, at least for the mundane
| aspects of government.
|
| I think that some people will still try to make an "in" crowd
| in which they are a member by introducing jargon, but
| separating people into these groups doesn't benefit most, so
| let's try to fight that.
|
| Simple words is better as it is inclusive and also makes things
| understandable.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Correct.
|
| Jargon === Signaling
|
| Signaling === Status
|
| Status === Power
|
| Like it or not, it's what humans are wired to do.
|
| That said, the wise do both. For example, use the acronym, but
| the spell it out as well. Well, you think about those who
| leverage signaling the most effectively, they tend to be more
| inclusive in their arc.
| sjducb wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. That's the logical
| next step from my OP.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| [flagged]
| dan-robertson wrote:
| The gov.uk team want to make a site for everyone in the country
| to use. Making it for some smaller "in" group would not help
| achieve that goal.
|
| I don't know what other word to use for launching a website but
| maybe there's a better one.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| >I don't know what other word to use for launching a website
| but maybe there's a better one.
|
| The "portal" term is deeply overused, because it means so
| many different things to so many different people. Sometimes
| it means a special site for a particular topic; sometimes it
| means a landing page.
|
| That's the problem with jargon. A lot of people hear a term,
| think they understand it, and then use it. They often have
| the wrong end of the stick, but they will not let go of their
| understanding of the word.
| mildmotive wrote:
| "deploying" is the closest I can come up with right now, but
| it's not quite the same.
| sjducb wrote:
| Launching a website has a precise technical definition.
| That's why it's GREAT jargon. It means "deploy to production"
| or "make it available to the users". Using it correctly is a
| strong honest signal that you know about web development.
|
| For the general public, you could use: Make website, build
| website, develop website, update website, create a new page.
| To an expert those feel wrong because they all mean slightly
| different things, the jargon is being used incorrectly.
|
| That's exactly how government people feel when you mis-use:
| "ring fenced budget", "allocate money to", "assign money to",
| "raise money for". Those all mean slightly different things
| and using them wrong feels wrong and marks you out as someone
| who doesn't know what they're talking about.
| coding123 wrote:
| i like your take here. I have this problem with people. If
| someone says: Can you create a website that describes this
| process? My first question is what domain name? Then they
| say, what do you mean we already have our website on
| ...com? Then I say: You said create a website - that
| indicates you want an entire website, it sounds like you
| just wanted a new page on the existing website.
| sakisv wrote:
| Maybe "createad a website", "built a website" are simpler and
| deliver the meaning.
|
| My thinking is that if by "launched" we mean "deployed to
| production" then it's useless for the end user. If it's not
| deployed to production, then the user has nothing to visit so
| for all intents and purposes of the end user you haven't
| built anything (or launched).
| WalterBright wrote:
| Caltech had its own special jargon, simply because it was fun:
|
| flicking - do something fun
|
| trolling - studying (opposite of flicking)
|
| troll - someone who studies
|
| infinite troll - someone who studies a lot
|
| Boeing had the "tin benders" for structural engineers, and the
| "tube benders" for the hydraulics engineers.
|
| In one company I worked at, the marketers were the "weasels"
| and the engineers were the "swine". A good piece of engineering
| was complimented as being "swinish".
|
| Good times
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| fredgrott wrote:
| I seem to remember the Richard Feynman story of how he hard to
| re-learn how to pronounce both math and science jargon.
| jerf wrote:
| You can always go for the high-risk, high-reward approach of
| demonstrating your stature by refusing to use the jargon by
| virtue of being too important to deal with it. Project
| confidence, do as you like, see how the dice roll.
| sjducb wrote:
| That works if you're super high status and you demonstrate
| status by breaking the rules. Think CEOs in turtlenecks and
| fundraising in your pajamas.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| [dead]
| cafard wrote:
| Twenty years ago or so I got a copy of _Database Design for
| Mere Mortals_ to review for a users ' group. The author spent
| several pages almost-but-not-quite defining Third Normal Form,
| without ever using the expression. I complained of this in the
| review.
|
| That's why jargon exists. It is much better to use 3NF or BCNF
| or simply normalize or denormalize than to bury the point in
| many words. .
| sjducb wrote:
| Why do people use phrases like "ring-fence", "circle-back",
| "let's take this offline" ?
|
| Those do not increase precision and phrases like "let's take
| this offline" are even more confused. Are they talking about
| an annoying idea in a meeting or a broken web server?
|
| I do agree that some technical jargon can help communication
| between experts. Understanding the jargon marks you out as an
| expert. That's the root of why so much status-signalling
| jargon exists.
|
| If someone says let's circle back to topic X they probably
| know a lot about project management...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's professional management jargon. If you're
| communicating with managers or McKinsey people, it gets
| added to your vernacular.
| kristianc wrote:
| Because they often are intended to obfuscate and save face
| -- and that is the point -- the 'plain English' alternative
| for "let's take this offline" is "you're dragging this
| discussion off topic" or "I want to avoid having a row with
| you about this in public."
| frankc wrote:
| You are right but calling this 'obfuscate and save face'
| is a pretty uncharitable take. "let's take this offline"
| is just a polite jargon for 'this is off-topic or
| inappropriate for this venue'.
|
| I generally find hacker news interpretation of business
| jargon as uncharitable and unnessarily hostile. Not sure
| why such an innoccous expression like 'circle-back' sends
| people into fits of rage. There is good reason to be
| circumspect about heavy project-management overhead as
| its often misapllied, but that really has nothing to do
| with this jargon.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| > Not sure why such an innoccous expression like 'circle-
| back' sends people into fits of rage.
|
| Because it's not innocuous, it's fucking obnoxious,
| that's what.
|
| Just as I was thanking my deities of choice a few years
| ago that "touch basing" all the time had become uncool
| and all but disappeared from the workplace parlance, now
| all of a sudden everyone is happily "circling back" to
| topics of choice. It seems to be coming and going in
| waves.
|
| This new hotness of a slang is also particularly shitty
| because it alludes to going through a few rounds of
| unnecessary talk before getting to the point.
|
| It's also one thing if one person is doing this, but if
| everyone and their dog keep circling back to stuff, it
| sounds quite idiotic.
|
| The only thing that's even worse is when a manager adopts
| military terminology while knowing nothing whatsoever
| about military.
| kristianc wrote:
| I didn't actually intend it to be uncharitable -
| sometimes allowing a stakeholder (even a 'key'
| stakeholder) an off ramp to a potentially awkward
| situation is a much better outcome for the long term
| health of the project where it's a reasonable assumption
| you're going to have to work with this person again, for
| a period of possibly months or years.
|
| HN probably has a higher proportion of people who prefer
| a slightly more direct style of communication, and enjoy
| working with code which is much more functional IO than
| working with humans. If those people are coming to HN to
| blow off steam, that's what you should expect - doesn't
| mean it wouldn't be disastrous if anyone tried to
| implement it in the real world.
| quanticle wrote:
| Because it doesn't clarify nor is it more concise than
| the alternatives.
|
| A good example of this is "learnings". I have seen
| _multiple_ managers use the word "learnings", usually in
| in phrases like, "What were our learnings from this?" Or,
| "What learnings can we take away?" But there's already a
| perfectly fine word to use: _lessons_! The only reason to
| use "learnings" instead of "lessons" is to show that
| you're a serious manager. It's just empty signalling.
|
| Similarly, "ring fence". Is it really that much better
| than, "set aside"? Does it add any nuance, or is it just
| meaningless change for change's sake?
|
| I am far more tolerant of jargon in law and technology
| than I am of it in business, because, in my experience,
| legal and technology jargon does function as shorthand,
| putting complex topics into a labeled box that allows the
| speaker to quickly make their point without having to
| repeat a bunch of knowledge that the audience can be
| assumed to be familiar with. Business jargon, on the
| other hand, is far more often merely different for the
| sake of being different.
| kristianc wrote:
| > The only reason to use "learnings" instead of "lessons"
| is to show that you're a serious manager. It's just empty
| signalling.
|
| I can't really comment on Signalling, but the word
| learnings isn't a new and modern invention. It's in
| Shakespeare!
|
| It's also a fallacy to think that there's a canon of
| 'acceptable' words we can choose from, nor that we are
| only allowed one word per concept. Language evolves over
| time and acquires meaning through use.
| quanticle wrote:
| I can _guarantee_ that none of the managers I 've
| interacted with who used "learnings" were making a
| reference to the Bard of Avon.
| kristianc wrote:
| I'm sure they weren't either, but that is kind of my
| point -- English is one of the most flexible languages in
| the world and no-one except linguists really looks too
| hard into the etymology of the words they use, but use
| the words that fit the occasion and adapt accordingly.
| And sometimes this works rather well -- much as you may
| despise the word learnings, we got the word scrumptious
| through the same process.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Policing jargon is also a marker of being in the "in" crowd, at
| least, a different one.
|
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34039816
| sjducb wrote:
| That post is a whole new level. We're using jargon to signal
| competence. They're using jargon to signal morality. If
| someone is incompetent then maybe don't promote them. If
| someone's immoral, what punishment should be dolled out
| against them?
| sph wrote:
| > If you stop using jargon then people assume you don't know
| what you're talking about
|
| I think it's starting to go the other direction. As a
| technical-minded person if I have a business meeting and the
| other person starts throwing those yuppie buzzwords in my face
| I'll just mentally put them in the " _empty suit with an MBA_ "
| bin.
|
| It might be my Southern European sensibilities, but I value
| straightforwardness very highly than time wasting nonsense to
| signal you're part of the in crowd. Unless the hacker ethos has
| died, and we're back to the 1980 where middle managers in
| business suits are the cool guys.
| sjducb wrote:
| You're still status signalling, just in a different way.
|
| When I wear a T-shirt from a Hackathon to a developer
| conference I'm signalling just as hard as the sales rep in
| the suit.
| sph wrote:
| Of course. I'm not so cool (or naive) to think I'm immune
| to peer pressure and tribalism.
|
| It doesn't necessarily mean that I'll have to go the other
| way and adopt the mannerisms of the annoying tech guy.
|
| https://youtu.be/02a723LsoFA
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| > Unless the hacker ethos has died, and we're back to the
| 1980 where middle managers in business suits are the cool
| guys.
|
| Those hackers got cool and became the guys in the suits.
| Dollar Uber Alles
| [deleted]
| masklinn wrote:
| But jargon is not the opposite of straightforwardness, a lot
| of jargon exists for concise precision[0], and hacker spaces
| are extremely jargon-heavy.
|
| Hell, your comment is full of jargon. "Yuppie", "buzzword",
| "suit" (and "empty suit"), ...
|
| [0] though it's usually very contextual when that's the case,
| which is really frustrating when things are taken out of
| context and either become completely unintelligible, or
| easily misinterpreted (and sometimes wilfully
| misrepresented).
| sph wrote:
| I used those words to be polite and not to call them
| pillocks. Empty suit isn't jargon, it's a commonly used
| idiom. Yuppie isn't jargon, I was thinking about the movie
| American Psycho. It's just a term to refer to your
| stereotypical middle managers high on their own farts.
|
| Avoiding business jargon doesn't mean having to stick to
| the 1000 most used English words.
| nickelpro wrote:
| There's not a straightforward consideration of what is
| jargon, what is slang, and what is argot. Some linguists
| use the terms synonymously and some have strict theories
| of categorization, but there's no universal consensus.
|
| In any case, your language here would certainly run afoul
| of the "simple English" the OP is espousing, and the OP
| terms such things "jargon", so contextually, yes, it's
| jargon.
|
| Although personally I agree, the OP is using a
| particularly sloppy definition of "jargon", which often
| has a stronger technical connotation than merely
| metaphorical or business newspeak language.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Empty suit isn't jargon, it's a commonly used idiom.
|
| Sorry to burst your bubble but that's jargon.
|
| > Yuppie isn't jargon, I was thinking about the movie
| American Psycho.
|
| It's also jargon.
|
| > It's just a term to refer to your stereotypical middle
| managers high on their own farts.
|
| I know what those terms mean.
|
| > business jargon
|
| Oh wow look at those goalposts flying by, amazing.
| honkler wrote:
| This was the first time I was reading the word yuppie. So
| certainly not a jargon to me.
| patrick451 wrote:
| In what sense are these words jargon? According to both
| the dictionary and common usage, jargon is the vocabulary
| of a specific trade or profession. And yet, yuppie is a
| word understand and used by everyone from crab fisherman
| to welders to lawyers to software engineers.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| Yuppie although originally likely a demographic term now
| has a well understood meaning. It is no longer jargon.
| sbuk wrote:
| > _commonly used idiom_
|
| Which the article points out, though not plainly, should
| be avoided.
| chrisoverzero wrote:
| > It's just a term to refer to your stereotypical middle
| managers high on their own farts.
|
| It means "young urban professional."
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Hum... You lost some changes.
|
| > and we're back to the 1980 where middle managers in
| business suits are the cool guys.
|
| Nope, we are at the 20's, when social-only corporate climbers
| know not to use suits on development-dominated cultures (not
| software development, but "creating new things from known
| principles" development). So suits are irrelevant nowadays
| and lost all signaling meaning.
| upofadown wrote:
| >If you stop using jargon then people assume you don't know
| what you're talking about.
|
| This works in reverse. If you use enough jargon then you can
| often convince people that you know what you are talking about,
| even if you don't... :)
|
| You will rarely get called on it because people hate to admit
| when they don't understand something.
| inopinatus wrote:
| On the other hand, simplicity is a hallmark of brilliance.
|
| "Feynman was a truly great teacher. He prided himself on being
| able to devise ways to explain even the most profound ideas to
| beginning students. Once, I said to him, 'Dick, explain to me,
| so that I can understand it, why spin one-half particles obey
| Fermi-Dirac statistics.' Sizing up his audience perfectly,
| Feynman said, 'I'll prepare a freshman lecture on it.' But he
| came back a few days later to say, 'I couldn't do it. I
| couldn't reduce it to the freshman level. That means we don't
| really understand it.'"
|
| -- Goodstein & Goodstein, _Feynman 's Lost Lecture: The Motion
| of Planets Around the Sun_ (Norton, New York, 1996)
| majkinetor wrote:
| Government is NOT a crowd, and if that was the case, it
| shouldn't be concerned about undefinable "in" status.
|
| Just simple words and sentences, unambiguous. ELI5. Those guys
| know their stuff.
| anon223345 wrote:
| Government folks typically do not know their stuff
| linhns wrote:
| > We don't 'tackle' anything unless we're playing rugby
|
| What about football (soccer)?
| lebski88 wrote:
| Not in the civil service old bean!
| Tomte wrote:
| Sir Humphrey disapproves. What has become of the Civil Service?
| susam wrote:
| UK Government Style Guide > Words to avoid:
|
| https://www.gov.uk/guidance/style-guide/a-to-z-of-gov-uk-sty...
|
| The link to this style guide is provided at the end of the
| article. However the article does not link to the exact section
| "Words to avoid" which is almost at the bottom of the style
| guide. The above link is a direct link to that section in the
| style guide.
| rgblambda wrote:
| >drive out (unless it's cattle), use 'stop', 'avoid' or
| 'prevent'
|
| Would a better substitute not be 'remove'? To drive out
| something is to get rid of it.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| This made me smile:
|
| > facilitate, say something specific about how you're helping -
| for example, use 'run' if talking about a workshop
|
| "Facilitate" is one of those words of which useless people
| doing useless work in an organization are very fond. I think
| that when asked to describe what specific work they are doing,
| they will just implode.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > "Facilitate" is one of those words of which useless people
| doing useless work in an organization are very fond.
|
| It also names those activities of some essential people
| without whom no work ever manages to get done.
| hrnnnnnn wrote:
| "Facilitate" can have a very useful and precise meaning when
| used to describe someone who is running a meeting of some
| sort and their role is to keep it on track, making sure it
| progresses in a timely manner and sticks to the agenda. That
| said, "run" also works for that meaning, it's just a little
| less precise.
|
| When it's used in a vaguer way then that I tend to agree with
| you.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Isn't the meeting role called a ,,moderator", or even
| ,,chair"?
| hrnnnnnn wrote:
| Both of those work too. Chair suggests the person called
| the meeting and cares about the outcome, where
| "facilitator" or "moderator" sounds more neutral.
| [deleted]
| diydsp wrote:
| > collaborate, use 'work with
|
| Sorry... collaborate means to share focus, while work with is
| ambiguous. It may simply mean work at the same time.
| kace91 wrote:
| It might be a consequence of not being a native speaker, but
| many of those are completely arbitrary choice of synonyms to
| me.
|
| Can you guys shed some light?
|
| Why is discussion better than dialogue? Work with better than
| collaborate? Concentrate on better than focus on?
| blululu wrote:
| It's a preference for choosing simpler more common words and
| expressions. This makes writing easier to understand for more
| people, but perhaps more importantly it prevents the writer
| from using some bizarre circumlocution in an attempt to sound
| sophisticated.
| version_five wrote:
| Having worked in consulting and government, I think it's just
| that many of those words have a slight connotation of
| pretension, like the writer is choosing words to sound smart.
| It's very subtle and in many cases probably not worth
| banning, but prohibition has the side effect of forcing
| people to think about what they're trying to write rather
| than just regurgitate pre-made phrases.
|
| Another subtlety in English is that words with Germanic roots
| feel more direct and simple while those with Latin roots feel
| flowery and pretentious so the former are often preferred.
| E.g. ask/inquire, answer/response. It's not always true, and
| some words may still be out of date.
|
| See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Germanic_and_Lati
| nat...
| kace91 wrote:
| > Another subtlety in English is that words with Germanic
| roots feel more direct and simple while those with Latin
| roots feel flowery and pretentious so the former are often
| preferred.
|
| Ooh, That might explain why it was hard for me to
| understand!
|
| I'm a Spaniard, so latin-derived words are usually
| familiar. That's what's keeping me from perceiving them as
| literary, since their Spanish counterpart is in my 'common
| speech register', so to speak.
| rikroots wrote:
| I worked in the UK Civil service for a long while. The
| language barrier back in the late 1980s was a real
| thing[1]. While I had good English skills, I had never made
| it to university - unlike most of my colleagues. Oxbridge
| alumni were (still are?) over-represented, and the language
| I heard/had to learn felt very academic at times. Heck,
| when I started some of the Senior SC were still adding
| comments to minutes in Latin!
|
| The Plain English campaign - whose work has been excellent
| over the decades - and diversity in CS hiring, have
| hopefully broken the worst parts of the language barrier.
|
| [1] - silly example: while most of the office-working world
| would write a "memo", in CS Jargonese it was a "minute". To
| this day I have no idea why the distinction was important.
| macintux wrote:
| Thank you for sharing that, it's a fascinating insight.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| As a well-read native speaker, I agree with all these
| decisions, and yet it's pretty subtle.
|
| "Focus" is a metaphor.
|
| "Work with" is at a considerably simpler level of English
| education than "collaborate".
|
| A "dialog" was originally a literary work with people
| responding to each other, so it's a bit more pretentious.
|
| Also, a dialog has a slightly more argumentative feel than a
| discussion - there is more of a sense of opposition.
|
| "We had a quick discussion to make sure we were on the same
| page and then had lunch." Dialog would be weird here.
|
| "We are trying to start a dialog between one side and the
| other."
| kace91 wrote:
| Same question as the other answerer: When does metaphor
| become etymology for a new meaning? concentrate is bringing
| something to a center, which seems metaphorical when used
| as keeping a goal in mind, and I'd guess a majority of
| words are originally formed that way - should they not talk
| about cranes (in the sense of construction) because they
| are name after a bird?
| ask_b123 wrote:
| Strangely I find the word discussion to sound more
| argumentative than dialogue.
|
| Though I guess that used in an international context (say,
| between countries) discussion would sound stranger than
| dialogue, and there is usually some degree of opposition
| between countries.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Partly it's using simpler, more common words, eg dialogue is
| quite uncommon outside of office-speak (or acting I guess).
| Partly it's about avoiding (often very stale) metaphors which
| make the meaning less clear to people with poorer literacy or
| who aren't native speakers. I think it also encourages more
| direct and concise writing which is a lot better for people
| who read slowly.
| IshKebab wrote:
| They are mostly suggesting simpler, more common words, or
| words that have direct meaning rather than meaning by
| analogy. E.g. "focus on" is used to mean "look at in detail"
| by analogy with the focusing mechanism of eyes and cameras.
|
| Some of them are definitely debatable but that's the general
| trend.
| kace91 wrote:
| But isn't that how most words are formed anyway? Sure,
| focus comes from optics, but concentrate is also an analogy
| (to bring something to a center).
|
| What is the line between analogies and etymology?
|
| Not really arguing with the specific choice, but
| considering words formed by analysis as harder to
| understand is a concept I've never seen before.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yes I agree, it does show a slight misunderstanding of
| linguistics. But I think on the whole choosing simpler
| less flowery words and phrases makes sense in this
| context.
|
| "Simpler and less flowery" is obviously not very well
| defined but it's also definitely a real spectrum. One of
| those things that needs taste and judgement.
| pifm_guy wrote:
| Avoid words with multiple meanings, particularly where you
| intend to use the non-primary meaning.
|
| For example, 'dialogue' to many people means a dialogue box
| on a computer screen. So that word is ambiguous. But a
| discussion has a primary meaning that is what the writer
| desires to use.
|
| Particularly for non-native speakers, using secondary
| meanings of words can be confusing.
| noctune wrote:
| You are thinking of a 'dialog box'.
| aliswe wrote:
| Or Dialog for short
| stevesimmons wrote:
| Where in the world are you? I am in the UK and I have
| never heard 'dialog' refer to a dialogue box.
| tom_ wrote:
| I am in the uk and have never heard "dialog" used by
| British speakers any other way. My experience has near
| universally that everybody that knows the term spells it
| "dialog", same as nobody spells "disk" with a c when it
| comes to the rectangular computer variety.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I've never seen the words "dialogue box". If I'm speaking
| of drama, that's dialogue; but but an interactive box in
| a computer UI is a "dialog".
|
| In the same way, the instructions controlling a computer
| are a "program"; the TV drama with the dialogue is a
| "programme".
|
| /me British English speaker (obv)
| tom_ wrote:
| Check out GIMP - its window menu includes an entry for
| "Dockable Dialogues", at least on macOS. Might be close
| enough? I don't think I've ever seen anybody else spell
| it that way though!
|
| (This would also, if you squint a bit, serve as an
| example of "dialog" being short for dialog box.)
| TotempaaltJ wrote:
| From Wikipedia:
|
| > The dialog box (also called dialogue box (non-U.S.
| English), ...
|
| This is a British government website, so "dialogue box"
| might not be uncommon.
| tom_ wrote:
| I don't think I've ever seen anybody call it a "dialogue
| box". Feels like at this point, along with "disk",
| "dialog" is a separate word with a separate (but not
| unrelated) meaning.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| As a Brit, I would never use 'dialogue box' (and don't
| recall ever seeing it)
|
| Some of us distinguish between program (software) and
| programme (a collection of projects)
| ivory54321 wrote:
| This one got me 'drive out (unless it's cattle)'
| sshine wrote:
| I like the gotchas because they're simultaneously funny and
| real: of course, the branches of government that deal with
| cattle and/or aircrafts aren't speaking metaphorically.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I like it. It can be hard to a avoid idioms like tackle as they
| are used alot. Avoiding acronyms, jargon etc. is a great start
| for everyone. Especially in IT!
| srfvtgb wrote:
| > Especially in IT
|
| Especially in what?
| kybernetyk wrote:
| >Avoiding acronyms, jargon etc. is a great start for everyone.
| Especially in IT!
|
| There's a reason why we have jargon and acronyms. They condense
| a lot of information into few words.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| I know bureaucrats, this guide will not be read, it will be
| actively ignored. Programmers like to flex with one liners, and
| crazy Rube Goldberg style design patterns. Bureaucrats versions
| of this is documents and wordplay.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| This is pretty much the polar opposite ofhow VCffunded companies
| communicate. And given that this guide is about making things
| crystal clear for any reader, I'd say that's not coincidental.
| For most VC backed companies, stating their mission, approach,
| and progress in plain English would mean an immediate end to
| their funding...
| agolio wrote:
| I'm always proud of the UK government web services. A lot of work
| is done to make high quality accessible tools to explain: the
| law, regulations, health (nhs website), travel guidelines, tax
| services, etc.
|
| Related to this post, the EU guidelines for inclusive language
| was a nice read for me.
|
| https://www.scribd.com/document/543481333/Woke-commission-eu...
|
| (The tables on page 10, 14, 17, etc, being for me the main point
| of interest)
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Sad to see it hosted on one of the most far-right, fake-news
| spreading French website
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fdesouche (today's headline is a
| terrorist attack that killed 3 persons in Paris this morning...
| perpetrated by a far-right extremist).
|
| The same PDF can be found here:
| https://www.scribd.com/document/543481333/Woke-commission-eu...
| agolio wrote:
| Many thanks for this information, I found the original URL
| via Google and was unaware of the parent site's reputation.
|
| I am updating my link to the one you suggest.
| ohbtvz wrote:
| Please don't link to that website. Would you link to stormfront
| to make any kind of point here?
| agolio wrote:
| Sorry was unaware of the parent site, have updated my link.
| teawrecks wrote:
| > Avoid using metaphors - they do not say what you actually mean
| and lead to slower comprehension of your content.
|
| Then what is the point of a metaphor?
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| ...addendum, words to avoid:
|
| Point, unless talking about a sharp object
|
| ;)
| Veen wrote:
| There are many reasons to use metaphors [0], but not if you're
| aiming for maximal comprehension by people who may not have
| advanced reading comprehension or English language skills. This
| advice is intended for writing in a very specific context.
|
| [0]: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200710-the-words-
| that-...
|
| (Plus, you used a metaphor in your question: "point")
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| All hail the newspeak, protecting us from wrongthink.
|
| Seriously, avoid the exact domain-specific terms ("jargon"),
| don't use "rich" figurative language ("tackle" is out)?
|
| The recommendation is really going for the lowest common
| linguistic denominator, like it's inspired from Simple English
| Wikipedia.
|
| Weren't we all supposed to elevate each other? Now it seems we
| aim for a common soft mushy muddy bottom.
|
| ("Elevate", "aim"... off with me head!)
| Metacelsus wrote:
| For a government website it's important that all the citizens
| can understand it, so it makes sense to use simpler vocabulary.
| Remember that ~50% of the population has IQ less than 100.
| m0rissette wrote:
| I just woke up so don't feel like fact checking this. Is the
| population really that mentally challenged? Can you provide a
| reference to your statistic?
|
| Changed "general population" to "population"
|
| See, it already had an effect on my writing.
| ohbtvz wrote:
| Modern IQ tests are normalized with mean 100 and standard
| deviation 15.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient
| stkdump wrote:
| It's in the definition of the IQ (assuming a bell curve
| distribution)
| giardini wrote:
| m0rissette says> _" I just woke up so don't feel like fact
| checking this. Is the population really that mentally
| challenged? Can you provide a reference to your
| statistic?[i.e. parent statement: 'Remember that ~50% of
| the population has IQ less than 100.']<"_
|
| Thanks for the laugh!8-)) Now go have a cup of coffee.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| It's also the government's job to educate its citizens (or in
| this case subjects).
|
| Has the UK government thrown in the towel wrt education, and
| now just goes for bare minimum?
|
| What's next, stopping the teaching of grammar in schools? :)
| detaro wrote:
| You really don't understand the difference between
| "throwing in the towel wrt education" and "acknowledging
| that not everyone meets those standards" (for a variety of
| reasons)?
| _s wrote:
| Roughly 10% of the UK does not use English as their main
| language.
|
| Roughly 30% of English speakers in the UK are bilingual (or
| more).
|
| The aim of this is not to improve peoples english ability, it's
| to ensure that they can understand and access the relevant gov
| services they require.
|
| There are a significant amount of Gov services available from
| childhood to adult education to learn, or improve their English
| separately to this.
| acdha wrote:
| One thing it's important to remember is that there's a big
| difference between recreational prose and documents which are
| important for a wide variety of people to easily understand.
| This is especially true when there are potential legal
| implications such as when a government staffer is giving
| instructions to a contractor or someone is telling citizens how
| to access public services. No, "tackle" probably isn't going to
| be a showstopper but it's also usually an incorrect metaphor so
| there's little lost by saying precisely what you mean.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| These words are not for providing direction to people after the
| decisions have been taken - they are used by people in the
| process of discussing problems and finding consensus across
| different (stakeholders?!) - when words that have ambiguity are
| useful in avoiding unnecessary conflict and saving the conflict
| for later when the lines are drawn
| mouzogu wrote:
| > ...without having to _wade through_ jargon, metaphors and
| corporate bluster.
|
| hmmm
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| This article is intended for government employees, the style
| guide applies to the UK population as a whole.
| Manfred wrote:
| Whenever someone uses the word 'portal', I always glance at the
| calendar nervously to make sure it's not still 2006. Luckily it
| almost always becomes apparent that they meant to say 'website'
| and have no clue what a 'portal' is.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| The term "Portal" was hijacked by the video game in 2007!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_(video_game)
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| In India we refer to most government websites as portals, even
| the very recent ones. I have no idea why because "website" is
| used for private websites regularly
| XCabbage wrote:
| Wait, what _is_ a portal, then, and where are you getting that
| definition from? I have been a web dev for a decade and I also
| understand a "portal" to be a broadly applicable term meaning
| basically any webapp that grants access to some data. Did it
| once have some narrower meaning, in times long past before I
| was a dev?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Around Y2K, a portal was a web-page that linked to assorted
| on- and off-site resources; the Yahoo! front page was a
| portal. It was a kind of aggregator, and commonly the off-
| site content would display within the portal site (don't let
| them navigate away from our site!)
| icepat wrote:
| I've always taken it to be a portion of a website that takes
| you onward to different areas of the website. Like, at least
| in Wikipedia, a portal is generally a list of links to areas
| related to a topic. In sales software, a sales portal
| generally leads you to areas in the website like sales flows,
| or something else.
| kimburgess wrote:
| The Australian Government has quite a good, related guide:
| https://www.stylemanual.gov.au/writing-and-designing-content...
| Tade0 wrote:
| > Avoid jargon
|
| I can get behind that.
|
| Some words, like "hub" are, to me, so overused that they've lost
| all meaning.
|
| Also there's a group of people who use jargon without
| understanding what they're saying, which would have been harmless
| if not for the positions they often have.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| What is fascinating to me is that it isn't just about jargon -
| this is also about the complex spatial metaphors that english
| native speakers use to sound ,,better".
|
| Reminds me of ,,Metaphors we Live By" https://george-
| lakoff.com/books/metaphors-we-live-by/
| m0rissette wrote:
| I enjoy the comments obviously using jargon without knowing it
| like "drop me a email"
| helloooooooo wrote:
| [flagged]
| kfrzcode wrote:
| Related: Vale is a plain-language or "prose" linter. Built a
| version of this for use with the US DVA
|
| https://vale.sh/
| aatd86 wrote:
| So besides being a programming language you mean?
|
| https://vale.dev/
|
| Just kidding... A bit off topic perhaps.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| I am compelled to plug "Politics and the English Language" (1946)
| by George Orwell. It's a short essay. You can find PDF copies for
| free via your favourite search engine.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Yes! In our post-truth era, this essay is an absolute must-
| read.
| combatentropy wrote:
| > This last example is a particularly hot topic for us on the
| intranet team. Every single week we receive requests to create a
| 'one-stop shop', a 'hub', a 'single front door' or a 'portal'.
|
| I too was on an intranet team, and I too often received requests
| for a "portal". It took me a long time to grasp why they were so
| fond of that word. Was a "portal" subtly different from a "page"
| or "site"? After many years, I concluded that a "portal" is a
| page with a bunch of links on it --- a hypertextual table of
| contents, if you will, for the requester's department or project.
|
| I did not work in government, just for a large company. This
| article is useful because highfalutin language is commonplace in
| any bureaucracy.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| There's a tinge of irony that the first few paragraphs talk about
| avoiding the audience needing to be "in-the-know" and then
| expects you to be when referring to House language or the old
| website.
|
| I'm not really the audience... at least I don't remember becoming
| a British civil servant, but I'd still love to know some
| examples.
|
| Separately:
|
| " We often wonder whether we're expecting colleagues to open the
| single front door or step through the portal and find themselves
| in the one-stop shop. In nine out of 10 cases, what people really
| want is some new pages on our intranet."
|
| I would bet that in nine out of ten cases the people don't know
| what they really want up front. When I get similar requests, and
| ask for concrete details for expectations, quite often they
| simply can't provide them. It's a feeling they have.
| usgroup wrote:
| "Every single week we receive requests to create a 'one-stop
| shop', a 'hub', a 'single front door' or a 'portal'. We often
| wonder whether we're expecting colleagues to open the single
| front door or step through the portal and find themselves in the
| one-stop shop. In nine out of 10 cases, what people really want
| is some new pages on our intranet."
| jraph wrote:
| English is a second language for me. It feels like this list is
| there to avoid newspeak / bullshit / being unnecessarily
| abstract.
|
| It seems like rephrasing with the replacement of many of these
| terms can make you think again and check that you aren't
| bullshitting a bit. "progress" => "Are we indeed actually working
| on this?"
|
| I'll certainly consult this list in the future to check my
| writing for simplicity.
| PreInternet01 wrote:
| You might also enjoy "Misused English words and expressions in
| EU publications":
| https://www.eca.europa.eu/Other%20publications/EN_TERMINOLOG...
| Vinnl wrote:
| Thank you! I saw that years ago and have wanted to reference
| it on several occasions, but never was able to find it again.
| gattr wrote:
| On a similar note: bullshit detection script [1]. For some
| fun, try using it on some large well-known tech corp's
| homepage.
|
| [1] https://mourner.github.io/bullshit.js/
| jraph wrote:
| I love this.
|
| In particular because I was once very close to someone
| working in some UE-related organization in Brussels. They
| routinely complained about the EU having its own English,
| mentioning the use of "persons" where "people" would be more
| correct. This use is not mentioned in this publication, maybe
| "persons" is actually fine-ish.
|
| I can see how many of these mistakes could come from the
| French language. Ah ah. Whoops. Sorry! :-) For instance,
| "foresee" used to mean "plan" where it really means
| "predict". I never made the mistake because I never made the
| connection myself, but in French "prevoir" indeed means both
| things.
|
| I wonder how much French being used in Brussels has
| influenced this. But I guess many European languages are
| similar to French for many of these things.
|
| Maybe some of these misuses are a testimony of the complexity
| of English, like the uncountable words, the prepositions or
| the usage rules of "allow".
|
| Maybe English could adopt some of these uses that seem
| convenient. Like, "transpose" instead of "incorporate into".
|
| And yes, I cringe a bit whenever I see "actually" used to
| mean "currently". It happens all the time.
|
| I guess English has its peculiarities in each area where it
| is spoken, and Europe is not an exception to this...
|
| And I mean, a big chunk of the English vocabulary is already
| French, we might as well continue the trend x)
| kazen44 wrote:
| also, the english used by the EU is sometimes far more
| easier to understand for people who are not native english
| speakers but have english as a second or third language.
| Mainly because it uses words "wrong" according to english,
| but it makes sense in most latin/german based languages.
| (actual is a good example of this for instance).
|
| British english especially can have some weird vocabulary
| which is hard to use if one is not actually from britiain
| and understands the implied meaning of the words.
|
| adequate is a good example of this for instance. according
| to british english, adequate means that is barely
| doable/good enough, while in most german/latin based
| languages. Adequate means that it is satisfactory.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Thanks for that! EU "English" seems to be a hybrid of an
| English lexicon and a French lexicon. I got as far as 'C',
| and so far I haven't seen one usage that wasn't either
| misleading or just plain wrong.
| teawrecks wrote:
| I'm all for reducing bullshit and unnecessary TLAs, but I feel
| like you could invert over half of the entries on this list and
| I wouldn't know. They're all just words I use in different
| circumstances. They have different connotations and aren't
| always interchangeable. I don't live in the UK, much less work
| for the UK govt, but if I did I would ignore this memo in the
| name of simplicity.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| The list also looks useful to "translate" existing corpspeak.
|
| But on the other hand, it can be misused as well by reversing
| the left and right sides...
| enkid wrote:
| I'm curious if other languages have similar issues. Does French
| suffer from too many metaphors, or Russian from euphemisms? The
| relationship between party slogans and Chinese always seems
| interesting and seems to often be an attempt to lean into such
| a phenomenon. Phrases like "let 100 flowers bloom," "the
| people's democratic dictatorship," "the Chinese dream," "the
| five pests," "socialism with Chinese characteristics," suggests
| to me that indirect use of language and euphemisms are rampant,
| though that seemed common in the USSR as well. I wonder if it's
| a byproduct of the political system, the language, or just the
| way these phrases are translated.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| All imperialists are paper tigers.
| jraph wrote:
| > I'm curious if other languages have similar issues
|
| French does indeed. For instance, the government and the
| corporate world love to use vocabulary to downplay
| situations. Like "mouvement social" (social movement) for
| "greve" (strike). It's like people are moving a bit, like
| they are dancing. It's cute. Or "restructuration" for
| "massive layoffs". Newspeak is all over the place. Like the
| sibling commenter says about Germany, "an unhealthy dose of
| euphemisms". We also have all the faux English startup
| vocabulary that makes things feel much more extraordinary
| than they are, or positive when they are not particularly so.
| In part to make France look cool internationally probably
| ("French Tech" [1] - "technologies francaises" sounds boring
| I guess).
|
| There are also tricks you can use to make things feel less
| acceptable, like saying "charge sociale" (social benefits
| charge, feels like social burden) for "cotisation sociale"
| (social security contribution).
|
| [1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Tech (this logo,
| yikes)
| wongarsu wrote:
| German government speak suffers from turning all verbs into
| nouns and the overuse of compound words (traffic light in
| regular German is "Ampel", in government German it's
| "Lichtsignalanlage" - light signal installation). If anything
| there's an underuse of metaphors, to the point that excessive
| clarity starts obfuscating the intent because it forms its
| own dialect.
|
| Meanwhile corporate German is very different, and notable for
| the use of English or pseudo-English words where perfectly
| good German words exist. And of course an unhealthy dose of
| euphemisms.
|
| Regular German probably tends more to understatement (the
| highest praise is "there's nothing to complain about")
| jraph wrote:
| > traffic light in regular German is "Ampel", in government
| German it's "Lichtsignalanlage" - light signal installation
|
| Ampel is so boring though!
|
| It makes me think of people I met at a conference doing
| research on vertical people transportation. In other words,
| lifts, or elevators.
| O__________O wrote:
| UK Government's Plain English website:
|
| - http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/
|
| And related free guides page:
|
| - http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/free-guides.html
|
| --------------
|
| Wikipedia also has a "simple" version here:
|
| - https://simple.wikipedia.org/
| daveoc64 wrote:
| > UK Government's Plain English website:
|
| That website has nothing to do with the government.
| cloudedcordial wrote:
| New Zealand government hopes to establish a plain language law
| when communicating with the public:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/22/new-zealand-ho...
|
| Even if there's such a law, people will find a way around it.
| incone123 wrote:
| I liked this:
|
| "We don't 'drive' anything forward unless we're in a car, and we
| haven't opened a 'one-stop shop' as we're not a supermarket.
| We've probably launched a website."
|
| But there is a place for esoteric terms. I just try to write with
| my audience in mind. Sometimes that's with technical terms other
| times with everyday metaphors.
| teawrecks wrote:
| Do not use "excellent", use very good.
|
| Do not use "amazing", use very good.
|
| Do not use "extraordinary", use very good.
|
| Do not use "incredible", use very good.
|
| Do not use "terrific", use very good.
|
| Do not use "abominable", use very bad.
|
| Do not use "awful", use very bad.
|
| Do not use "horrible", use very bad.
|
| Do not use "terrible", use very bad.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| >We don't 'drive' anything forward unless we're in a car, and we
| haven't opened a 'one-stop shop' as we're not a supermarket.
|
| But the very next sentence:
|
| >We've probably launched a website
|
| Surely we don't launch anything unless it's a boat or a rocket?
|
| I mostly agree with the author, but they nicely demonstrated how
| hard it is to avoid jargon.
| acaloiar wrote:
| US based companies would be well served by applying this list to
| their communication as well.
|
| These are real life words from a real life human, recently
| observed: "The value drivers reducing company spend"
|
| Spend is a verb and value is not street-legal here in the states.
| mft_ wrote:
| Similarly, "learnings".
|
| Better known as "lessons", or "things we've learned".
| acaloiar wrote:
| Don't forget to _share out_ your learnings :)
| c22 wrote:
| The Plain English Campaign's list of examples [0] (linked in TFA)
| was quite amusing. My favorite:
|
| _' the hours of non-hours work worked by a worker in a pay
| reference period shall be the total of the number of hours spent
| by him during the pay reference period in carrying out the duties
| required of him under his contract to do non-hours work.'_
|
| [0]: http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/campaigning/examples
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I briefly worked in the Swedish public sector that had at that
| point been pushing for plain language for a while.
|
| The problem they encountered is that the government still needs
| to be able to specify what they mean with precision. So what
| happened is that common words became overloaded with specific
| and often non-obvious legal meanings.
|
| People at large with no clue how to "speak government" still
| didn't understand what the government said, but instead of a
| bunch of known unknowns it turned the language into a minefield
| of unknown unknowns.
|
| (This got at least some attention notice during the covid
| pandemic, during which there was clear miscommunication between
| the government which used 'recommendations' to mean a strong
| non-legal mandate, and parts of the public which took it to
| mean helpful tips, like a movie recommendation)
| ohbtvz wrote:
| Well, what's the difference between a "strong non-legal
| mandate" and a "helpful tip"? Either it's mandatory or not.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Both are non-mandatory, but the first carries the
| connotation that this is something the government thinks
| you should be doing, but the latter is more like a
| suggestion of something cool you may want to do, like visit
| the Vasa museum next time you're in Stockholm.
|
| Yes, they are both voluntary, but the nuance is quite
| different. That ambiguity in nuance is a problem, given
| that "recommendation" is the strongest wording for a non-
| legal mandate the Swedish government will use.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > but the first carries the connotation that this is
| something the government thinks you should be doing
|
| Unfortunately that distinction was deliberately
| obfuscated by the UK Government during the COVID crisis.
| They would issue "guidelines" that you could be arrested
| for violating. As I recall, they began as real
| guidelines, and morphed into legal mandates without ever
| becoming laws.
| ohbtvz wrote:
| If I understand you correctly, the issue is that the
| Swedish government used jargon masquerading as a common
| word, and as a result people didn't understand the
| meaning. That's another example of jargon being a
| problem!
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Yeah. The deeper problem is that the government needs
| more precision than common words offer.
|
| Just as programmers invented programming languages to
| unambiguously express an idea, the legal system uses
| legal jargon to unambiguously express an idea. Getting
| rid of jargon means you need to express specific meanings
| some other way. The Swedish government chose overloading
| specific meanings to ambiguous words, which is really
| strictly worse than legal jargon.
| joosters wrote:
| _... "We haven't opened a 'one-stop shop' as we're not a
| supermarket. We've probably launched a website."_
|
| Have you really _launched_ a website, or just started one? Since
| the same article rejects the use of 'drive' and 'land', I'd say
| that 'launch' is fairly comparable.
| psychphysic wrote:
| There's also the issue of words that sound offensive.
|
| Case in point, niggard [0] has cost people their jobs. Wikipedia
| maintains a list of controversies[1].
|
| [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/niggard
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word...
| psychphysic wrote:
| Or this Chinese example
|
| https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/09/08/professor-sus...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| To u/helloooooooo whose comment has been flagged:
|
| > Why should the government water down documents and treat people
| like morons? It's insulting.
|
| Governments have the sometimes formal (e.g. ADA), sometimes
| informal requirement that its public-facing communication should
| be accessible to all citizens. Historically, that has been mostly
| seen in websites that were accessible to people with various
| disabilities, e.g. proper alt tags on images, subtitles in video
| / audio, ensuring legibility with high contrast and avoiding
| various forms of colors that have common color blindnesses
| associated, but given that over half of the US is barely able to
| comprehend a 6th grade text [1] and in the UK anything from 12 to
| almost 27% (depending on the state) has "very poor literacy
| skills", it makes sense to use simplified language.
|
| Additionally, given that low literacy rates are usually closely
| related to socio-economic disadvantages and/or migration history,
| it is very important for those people to have information about
| basic government aid programs available in an even clearer, more
| simplified subset of English (and, if possible, also in the
| dominant languages of immigrants).
|
| [1]
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2020/09/09/low-...
|
| [2] https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-
| lite...
| enkid wrote:
| You also have the problem that metaphors and euphemisms are
| less pre use than plain language, leading to misunderstandings.
| pifm_guy wrote:
| Unfortunately, I think most governments around the world,
| despite efforts to make government websites easy to use for
| everyone, still fall short for a good chunk of the population.
|
| I suspect there might be a better approach... Eg. A 15 minute
| phone call or meeting once a year with a 'government expert',
| whos role is to ask about your life, and then enroll you in any
| government programs which you would benefit from.
|
| For those who would benefit from government assistance and
| aren't making use of it, meetings could be longer or done with
| a subject area expert.
|
| For example, in the UK, under 50% of people eligible for free
| monetary benefits from the government claim them.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > For example, in the UK, under 50% of people eligible for
| free monetary benefits from the government claim them.
|
| These bureaucratic hurdles are _by design_ to limit the
| amount of people actually using the services they are
| entitled to by law.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Some government agencies already do something like this.
| (There has been some resistance to implementing it for
| "money-saving" reasons, but IIRC it was 5hen pointed out that
| it was hypocritical for agencies that had supposedly the job
| to help to _only_ have an anti-fraud department but not its
| "reverse".)
| lambic wrote:
| I hate seeing 'utilise' where 'use' would be perfectly fine.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Whenever I see "utilize" on wikipedia, I fix it.
|
| "Utilize" is a word, but I don't think it means the same as
| "use". I think it means "to take something that is useless, and
| make it useful", or "to turn something into a tool". So you
| could utilize a written-off car as a source of parts, perhaps.
|
| If you utilize "utilize" to mean "use", you're indulging in
| grand language to look more authoritative. And nobody utilizes
| "utilize" in spoken English.
| ask_b123 wrote:
| Wait, that definition is too constraining. And imho Wikipedia
| articles don't need that "fix", unless the articles are in
| the Simple English Wikipedia:
| https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
|
| But a disclaimer: in my native language "utilize" is
| relatively common.
| pydry wrote:
| Most of the "amusing" examples in the linked seem to me to be
| pretty legitimate attempts at being precise. Yeah, the definition
| of hot food seems nitpicky but it kind of _has_ to be nitpicky
| for their purposes of enforcing the rules (dumb rules maybe, but
| they didn 't pick the rules).
|
| The advice against using the phrase "combat problems" or even
| "key stakeholders" instead of just "stakeholders" seems somewhat
| pointless to me. I don't think these are changes that will
| significantly improve reader comprehension. Maybe avoiding the
| use of the word "stakeholder" at all will but they dont seem to
| want to go that far.
| ohbtvz wrote:
| Using fewer words introduces less cognitive load and drives
| your point better.
|
| For example, you wrote "The advice [...] seems somewhat
| pointless to me." Well, are you saying that it is pointless, or
| not? I don't know you, so I don't know what your scale of
| pointlessness is. I don't know what "somewhat pointless"
| corresponds to. Is it a tiny bit pointless, is it a medium
| amount of pointlessness, something else? I don't know, but I
| have to think about it because you wrote a meaningless word in
| your sentence. And even once I have understood the sentence, I
| am left thinking: "well, if it's only somewhat pointless, maybe
| it's not pointless after all!"
|
| The same thing happens with "key stakeholders": now I have to
| think about a hierarchy of stakeholders. What scale is being
| used? Who's key, who's non-key? Does the sentence apply to all
| stakeholders, only some of them?
|
| Multiply this by a hundred occurrences in a long document, and
| you obtain something that will be more difficult to read. But
| government documents have to be readable by everyone: people
| whose native tongue is not English, uneducated people who have
| trouble reading simple texts, etc. And for what? Sugarcoating
| your text so that it's less assertive? Showing literary
| prowess?
| pydry wrote:
| >For example, you wrote "The advice [...] seems somewhat
| pointless to me." Well, are you saying that it is pointless,
| or not?
|
| I am stating something controversial and leaving open the
| possibility that I might be wrong or partially wrong.
|
| What you are inadvertently arguing here is that humility is
| unnecessary.
| ohbtvz wrote:
| The sentence "seems ... to me" already carries that
| meaning.
| sopooneo wrote:
| This is well written, but frustrated me because the "guide",
| which is referenced early in the article, is only linked at the
| end. And even then, they link to a larger page, with instructions
| on how to search for the actual list of words.
|
| Here a direct link: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/style-guide/a-to-
| z-of-gov-uk-sty...
| [deleted]
| lbriner wrote:
| People laugh at jargon but my take is that most people learn
| things without any critical evaluation. If you do your internship
| at a big corporate, all you will hear is "kicking the wheels",
| "criteria-based project team" or "key stakeholders".
|
| I think people just assimilate it, don't question why and then
| re-iterate it.
|
| As others have said, it is also an example of "weasel words".
| Words that are designed to make what you are saying sound more
| impressive.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Well, to avoid in general. One thing I've notice in switching
| between working for companies and organizations from various
| regions is how management speak.
|
| For instance:
|
| Danish company: "We're doing great, here's how much we made last
| quarter". Or: "You fucked up, don't do that."
|
| Norwegian company: "We be looking to aligning our pricing
| strategy using market benchmarks." "We'll be needing to conduct a
| behavioral correction session in the near future to ensure that
| you better understand your role in our organizational structure".
|
| US company: .... I can't... you get a three page email with long
| words, no obvious structure to the text, only to make a single
| point. You're not really sure what that point was, even if you
| spend 45 minutes trying to parse the content.
|
| Generally speaking, use fewer words, try not to communicate just
| because you think you must.
| superjan wrote:
| This is an area where machine learning could make a positive
| impact to society. Have something like GPT rewrite/review all
| public facing text. Preferably a required rewrite, which is
| published unless it is factually incorrect.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Forgive the typical HN metacomment:
|
| I click the link and I get a full screen pop up with the sentence
| in my face "cookies enable core functionality"
|
| I'm trying to read some text man. All this tech and we can't send
| a frickin link that opens to some text. Cmon.
| dijit wrote:
| People like to blame GDPR or the ePrivacy directive but GDPR
| explicitly states that cookies set for an essential purpose of
| the site are exempt from consent:
|
| > Receive users' consent before you use any cookies _except
| strictly necessary cookies._
|
| it further explains:
|
| > [Strictly necessary cookies] are essential for you to browse
| the website and use its features, such as accessing secure
| areas of the site. Cookies that allow web shops to hold your
| items in your cart while you are shopping online are an example
| of strictly necessary cookies. These cookies will generally be
| first-party session cookies. While it is not required to obtain
| consent for these cookies, what they do and why they are
| necessary should be explained to the user.
|
| Makes me wonder why we have all these cookie consent dialogs,
| either it's people playing it safe or they really do not set
| cookies for a true purpose.
|
| if the latter: then all that's happened with GDPR is that we've
| been given visibility to the problem.. and it feels like
| everyone (including governments apparently) will adopt some
| measure of dark patterns to ensure they can still track people.
| lozenge wrote:
| Analytics are necessary - without analytics sites' design
| would be much worse.
|
| They don't meet the legal definition of strictly necessary.
|
| They don't really "track you" in any meaningful way - the
| most interesting info in the gov.uk cookies seems to be
| language (English or Welsh) and if the user provides it,
| country (England, Wales, Scotland or NI).
|
| Still, the data falls under GDPR, so we get consent dialogs.
|
| https://www.gov.uk/help/cookie-details
| dijit wrote:
| the ones you mention would fall into "essential use", since
| its first party and is used for functionality on the site.
|
| what you didnt mention is that:
|
| > We also use LUX Real User Monitoring software cookies
| from SpeedCurve to measure your web performance experience
| while visiting GOV.UK.
|
| stuff like this is why they need the consent dialog.
|
| if instead of embedding tracing cookies and analytics JS
| they processed access logs, they would learn a lot without
| needing the dialog. However, since everyone just throws up
| the dialog (and users are trained to expect it) its "not
| worth solving".
| Aardwolf wrote:
| > what they do and why they are necessary should be explained
| to the user.
|
| Which would require showing this info somewhere even for
| essential cookies. Is a popup required for this?
| dijit wrote:
| No, a popup is not required, it can be part of the privacy
| policy.
|
| https://termly.io/faq/do-i-need-a-cookie-policy-on-my-
| websit...
| majkinetor wrote:
| I never want to accept popup that isn't required. Why do
| we even have that.
| lozenge wrote:
| That website has a popup when I load it from the UK.
|
| "We use essential cookies to make our site work. With
| your consent, we may also use non-essential cookies to
| improve user experience and analyse website traffic. By
| clicking 'Accept', you agree to our website's cookie use
| as described in our Cookie Policy. You can change your
| cookie settings at any time by clicking "Preferences".
| Preferences/ Decline/ Accept"
| dijit wrote:
| yes. they set marketing and tracking cookies.
|
| if you're not doing that then they're telling you that
| you don't need a pop-up.
| mfcl wrote:
| Thanks, useful information.
|
| A bit funny that this page does show a large popup so
| that you can accept their use of cookies.
| tzs wrote:
| Wait...so the rule is
|
| > These cookies will generally be first-party session
| cookies. While it is not required to obtain consent for these
| cookies, what they do and why they are necessary should be
| explained to the user
|
| _How_ do you explain to the user what those cookies do and
| why they are necessary?
|
| Is it OK just to have an explanation on your site's terms of
| service page or on its legal page, or do you have to put it
| somewhere you are sure the user will see?
| dijit wrote:
| its ok to have an explanation on your privacy policy or
| cookie policy pages.
|
| you do not need to issue a pop-up, you just need the user
| to be able to find the explanation if they want to.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| Here's a more plausible and less cynical take:
|
| Most people, whether in government or in business, can't give
| a flying fsck about GDPR or whatever. They just want to get
| their primary job done, and to them stuff like GDPR is just
| legal red tape that's imposed on them and that serves no
| value whatsoever, merely serving as roadblocks slowing them
| down from doing their real job. They don't want to understand
| the intricacies of GDPR, they just want to get it over with
| as quickly as possible, which means slapping a cookie banner
| on the site, checking the "I am now compliant" checkbox that
| the GDPR officer nagged them with, and calling it a day. They
| don't want to go through the trouble of researching a couple
| of weeks what the best user-friendly way is of being GDPR
| compliant when they can just install a cookie banner in 5
| minutes.
|
| Sounds familiar? If you're a developer in a large corporation
| then I'm sure you have also been annoyed by the tons of
| security and firewall rules, and most of you would rather
| work around them than trying to understand why they exist and
| how to best comply to them both in mechanics and in spirit.
| Just like you're not deliberately trying to be evil and
| breaking the company's security, they're not deliberately
| being evil and trying to violate privacy.
| majkinetor wrote:
| So it is an UX problem.
|
| Most people don't give a fuck about anything that isn't
| related to their current task. However, there are laws, and
| company must give a fuck about it and do such UX so that
| those that don't give a fuck are not fucked on spot.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-12-23 23:01 UTC)