Jargoning on and on

As my regular reader(s) may know, I started learning to scuba dive in November and I'm now trying to get the kit together. I've found a dry suit with all the thermal undies for a very good price on eBay, and I'll be trying it for the first time in the pool on Monday, so fingers crossed that the obviously new zip has been properly fitted. I think I'll leave the undersuit off for the evening, just in case! It might be a tad too hot in the pool, too, as it's slightly warmer than the North Sea.

Next on the list is a boyancy compensator (BC, BCD or stab jacket), gas cylinder (or bottle), 1st stage, 2nd stage (regulator), BC air hose etc. As you may have noticed, there's a lot of jargon involved here - I had to look it all up on the internet because our training doesn't cover the intricacies of 1st stage, 2nd stage and so on - we're just told "This is your reg, this is the octopus (or AS), this puts air in your BC, this one's your gauge - oh and you'll need another air hose for your dry suit, of course".

That's all very well, but when you start looking for the gear on the 'net everyone suddenly gets very technical. They don't talk about regs and octopusses... not even for second-hand sales on eBay. I know there's an argument to be made for correct description, but not to the point of excluding people who need the right gear to stay alive 20 metres under the sea. Well, other people have obviously had this problem before, so when I Googled "scuba dive jargon" I found several lists explaining everything I need to know and then some. Thank heavens - and whoever wrote them! Like Scots, I can't speak the language very well yet, but at least I'm beginning to understand it.

Again, the other day I was talking to someone about wine-speak. I spent 15 years in the wine trade, latterly teaching evening classes to consumers, so I know quite a lot about wine-speak. It used to make my sister roar with laughter when I talked about a wine having "biscuits on the nose". Made sense to me, but she had a wee mental picture of a small dog sitting up and balancing a biscuit on his muzzle. When you're trying to describe the often quite small differences between one Champagne and another, you need a good list of flavour-associations; people in the trade know what you're talking about, everyone else just gapes.

One way and another, it all got me thinking about jargon and how so many people think it's OK to plaster it all over their web pages. It will be, if the only people who ever read the pages are in the know (e.g. a site written by an engineering company to be read by other engineers). But what if, like me with the scuba kit, readers know they need the stuff but haven't a clue what you're talking about? This is where a good copywriter can really help, by keeping it simple and using layman's terms if at all possible; if not, by creating a glossary that can either go on a separate page or in a box at the side of the page where the jargon's being used.

I also think some people use jargon to try and confuse you into buying stuff you don't need - I definitely got that impression when I tried to buy a new domain name at GoDaddy a few weeks ago (see "Website Drama in NE Scotland", below). I got so muddled and befuddled I just left the site and registered the name elsewhere, and I think a lot of people do the same.

So if you're writing a site for something that tends to use jargon, my advice would be to follow Henry Ford's dictum: KISS (Keep It Simple and Straightforward - that's the polite version anyway!). Avoid jargon like the plague. Cliches, on the other hand.... but that's a different story.

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