Synergy! Jargon Doesn’t Just Cause Eye Rolls 🙄

Every community has jargon. We’re probably the most guilty here in the tech community. The non-profit community certainly has some and your organization too. Often it’s a short-hand way to talk with one another. But the risk is that people may tune out, feel excluded, or frankly not understand what you’re saying. The chance of alienating people is especially high when jargon infiltrates your website, and you aren’t there to explain it.

Jargon can be a form of gatekeeping. Anyone who’s ever walked into a room full of web developers talking shop knows how that feels. Below are two simple techniques to help you become more mindful of the words you choose.

Nonsense sentences such as, "achieve configurable community engagement" created by a nonprofit jargon generator. — Jargon is so prevalent in the nonprofit sector that Tech Soup has a non-profit jargon generator to “help” you write your next annual report 😉.

Plain Language to the Rescue: Attention, Cognitive Load, Voice

Clear writing is great writing. This is true everywhere, and it’s certainly true on the web. Online, our attention is fleeting, and the world pulling us away is chaotic. It’s critical that we communicate key information directly to our audiences. When you’re using jargon, ask yourself, “Is this understandable outside of my organization or niche?”

Even for those who do understand your jargon or complex writing, it still adds to cognitive load: the mental energy needed to process information. That cognitive load can be extra onerous to those of us already in a distressed state or for certain populations such as the elderly, students, and children.

Your voice, the style in which you communicate, also risks getting lost in nonprofit speak. In this world of bots and automation, people are searching for a real person with an identifiable personality to connect with.

Get Personal

One technique to make your language clean, lower cognitive load, and retain your voice is to think through how you would speak to a person face to face.

A client of ours, the Social Innovation Forum (SIF), had an About page written in that all too common nonprofit jargon.

The Social Innovation Forum's original text on their About page, which reads "The Social Innovation Forum provides a unique combination of capacity building and network building to create positive social change in greater Boston. We actively connect supporters (funders, investors, and volunteers) and practitioners (nonprofit and social business leaders) to build productive relationships focused on growing social impact."

Imagine being out to coffee with a friend who asks what SIF is all about and you replied,

“The Social Innovation Forum provides a unique combination of capacity building and networking building to create positive social change in greater Boston.”

A very stock photo-like shot of two people having what appears to be a hilarious conversation over coffee.

Their eyes would glaze over, regretting having ever asked. (Check please!)

Define Your Voice

Defining your nonprofit’s “voice” through an activity called This, But Not That helps you write accessibly but with personality.

For example, at DevCollaborative our voice is the following:

Passionate, but not preachy
Authoritative, but not arrogant
Honest, but not insensitive
Casual, but not unprofessional

Using these characteristics guides us in writing clearly without watering our writing down to the point that the dreaded glazed eyes return.

Evaluate Reading Level

Another effective strategy is to evaluate the reading level of your writing with a tool like the Hemingway Editor.

The Social Innovation Forum's original text on their About page evaluated by the Hemingway Editor to be written at a post-graduate level.

In this case, you would need a PhD to understand what SIF does.

The SIF team rewrote their About page making it clear and meaningful.

The SIF's about text rewritten with concise plain language, now scored at a Grade 14 level by the Hemingway Editor.

And while this is registering at a Grade 14 level, the reason is the unavoidable jargon. (You can’t not state your name!) Luckily, SIF’s audience does understand these specific terms.

Conclusion

You might be feeling a bit overwhelmed now thinking about the dozens (maybe hundreds!) of pages on your website riddled with jargon. Fear not. Accessible content is not a binary, but a spectrum. There is no perfect, just better. Start with high traffic and key pages. You can also build tools like the Hemingway Editor into your workflow. Doing so ensures you are writing clearly from the beginning.

The shift in practices will take work, but the result is a broader range of people finding and engaging with your work. Goodbye rolled eyes!