The Phantom's Tale

Buzzwords

             Your accounts payable exceeds your accounts receivable plus assets and revenue, therefore your net worth is in the red and you are in debt. Can you define accounts receivable, accounts payable, net worth, in the red, and debt without looking them up? How about pauldron, cuirass, targe, claymore, greaves? The answer is likely not. What these two sets of words have in common is that they are jargon, buzzwords. Every profession, sport, video game, novel, or organization has them. In writing, buzzwords can show off the writer’s intellect and attract a certain kind of reader, but too many buzzwords will clout your message and ward readers away. The effect is parabolic (meaning there is an optimal amount of buzzwords you should use).

            Unfortunately, there is no across the board happy medium, and this is not a detail that can be addressed in the creation stage, but it is something a writer should be wary of when finally he/she is looking to polish (refine) a piece. The premise for choosing the appropriate amount of buzzwords is addressing questions like: who is my target audience? How much of an understanding do they have of my material? Am I seeking to entertain novice readers or avid readers? The use of buzzwords is a balancing trick. Too little and a piece has no depth or intellectual value, too much and a piece may be mindboggling and ill suited to get a message across to your specific audience.

            Too many buzzwords will have an audience in MEGO (My Eyes Glazed Over) mode. For instance, a contract, terms of service, or a privacy policy, documents that are important to understand are loaded with buzzwords and jargon. Not only are they dry and difficult or heavy to read through, they may also require an interpreter, a luxury that most readers don’t have and are not going to attain when they read for pleasure. If a reader has to consult a dictionary every paragraph, they will likely find your work relatively exhausting and could even discontinue reading it then and there.

            This lack of understanding is more than just poor vocabulary. The layman makes up most of the reading body because most people are not doctors, lawyers, historians, war veterans etc. This is not a tip that will make or break your work, but if mastered, it has the potential to broaden a reading audience to an optimal level, without deterring intellectual readers. This is just one of the many polishing techniques to watch while revising and editing. To perform a buzzcheck, (my own buzzword for checking buzzwords) test the piece in question on someone who represents your target audience. Some sure warning signs are comments like “difficult to picture what is going on,” or “the message is unclear.”