“Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent,” said George Orwell in his essay, Politics and the English Language. And although the author of Animal Farm was writing this nearly 80 years ago, it’s just as relevant today.
Do you strive to use plain English in your work? My hunch is that most people in charity communications would say “Of course”. And thankfully we have handy little online tools such as Hemingway to help us.
But I also think that, as a sector, we could do better. We could be working much harder to produce clearer and more accessible communications, doing our best to use everyday words, simple sentences and direct language. In other words, cutting out the jargon.
To test this theory, I asked ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence platform, to find me examples of charity jargon. It didn’t disappoint, with phrases like ‘digital literacy’ and ‘livelihood initiatives’ cropping up. I then did some browsing myself and came up with some similar results.
Should we regularly be using phrases that are unclear to the world outside of the sector, such as ‘delivering change’ and ‘framing narratives’? Why do some of us say ‘at pace’ when we mean ‘quickly’? One team I worked with was very fond of using ‘remediate’. When I first came across this word, I had to look up what it meant.
I’m not claiming to be perfect myself. And I know that arguing for more plain English is hardly an original idea. But every so often we need to take stock and reset the ways we communicate our work.
Part of assessing our communications is standing back and asking ourselves if we’re doing enough to avoid jargon, empty slogans and technical or complex language – and reminding ourselves and others of the need to say things straight.
Is complexity OK for a specialist audience?
I was recently chatting to a senior charity executive about the issue of clarity in communications. They suggested it was sometimes OK to use technical language and jargon for a specialist audience. After all, they figured, specialists are bound to understand it.
I think that’s a massive assumption to make of your reader. And besides, why run the risk of confusing them?
Government content writing guidelines go further into writing for specialists, highlighting the science behind keeping things simple.
Whitehall colleagues, it states, are wrong if they say that they do not need to use plain English when writing technical or complex content for a specialist audience. “Research shows that [people with higher literacy levels] prefer plain English because it allows them to understand the information as quickly as possible” – a plus when you have a lot of things to read.
The same guidance recommends that using plain English means writing our communications for a reading age of a nine-year-old: the average writing age in the UK. (For chapter and verse on accessible communications, check out the excellent and detailed guidance put together by CharityComms.)
Jargon can come back to bite us
It’s easy to slip into using jargon in the workplace, assuming that it will stay internal and feeling like we don’t need to keep up the same high standards we expect of our external communications.
After all, there will be a deep, shared understanding of our work, so what’s the harm in using an acronym here, or industry shorthand there?
But routinely using jargon comes with risks. The more you do it, the higher the chances that what goes on behind closed doors can become the norm in how colleagues describe the work. And before you know it, the words or acronyms are out there for everyone to find, including your supporters.
I once heard a story about a spokesperson for an environment charity who, when interviewed on prime-time radio, described large wild animals as ‘charismatic mega-fauna’.
As well as this being a great example of internal science-speak escaping into the outside world, I’ve often wondered how it went down with the programme producers (to say nothing of their audience). Would they be falling over themselves to come back to that charity the next time they needed comment? And if not, what opportunities for more profile might they have missed?
The business case for clarity
There is surely a business case for avoiding jargon and complex language in our communications. You want to bring people with you rather than baffle them. It must be easier to get people to support your charity if you’re speaking naturally, the same way that they do. It helps them feel they can relate to you.
More importantly, there is a powerful ethical argument for using plain language – and it’s becoming stronger by the day. This is down to charities’ increasing focus on the importance of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) when they go about their business.
The use of jargon and technical or complex language is even more problematic in this context. Not only does it put up barriers to understanding, but to accessibility and, ultimately, inclusion.
Ask yourself the following. Can a genuinely inclusive organisation, one which wants its supporters as well as staff to participate in its mission, effectively communicate its business using language that’s hard to understand?
I really don’t think so.
Further reading
- Accessible communication: A starting point to foster more inclusive comms
- Using language to be an inclusive brand
- Research comms is for everyone: how to communicate stats and complex info
Banner Image: Katrin Hauf on Unsplash