“I regret to inform you that although we put a pin in it, we never circled back.”
Jargon isn’t the evil ogre it's sometimes made out to be. Little shortcuts in how we talk and write can help to bind groups together — and clichés didn’t start out clichéd. But jargon has a nasty side. It can obscure meaning, conceal malice, exclude newcomers, discourage discussion, assert authority, erode trust, encourage laziness, waste brain-power and sap the meaning from communications. Where we can, we ought to wean ourselves off worn-out buzzwords.
In government, bloodless language can take on a new tier of importance. Sometimes, it’s harmless, as with useful technical policymaking terms or banal coinages like “diarise”. But it can also distract from harmful measures. For example, cuts to fire safety, can be euphemised as “value engineering”. People have a right to clarity, and clear communication means owning your message — not hiding behind obscure double-talk.
Public servants have a love-hate relationship with government jargon and buzzwords. Science tells us we ought to swap jargon for vivid language, but it is so easy to use tired terms instead of fresh messages. We asked you for your least favourite examples and their translations. Here’s what you gave us.
Corporate gremlins
Let’s get started with garden-variety corporate blah. Here are the terms you told us were confusing, overused, or simply unnecessary. To sound smarter, drop these from your communications.
| Jargonish | Plain English |
|---|---|
| Synergy | In theory: Synergy is meant to describe situations where there is a benefit for two teams or organisations to work together In practice: Two teams are working on the same thing; one of them should probably stop |
| Deliverable | A task that can be done |
| Socialise | Introduce a concept, idea, plan, project or product to a group of people or an organisation. Not as fun as it sounds |
| Utilise | Use. Always use |
| Diarise | Dry your eyes, this just means to arrange a meeting or put a date in the diary |
| Moving forward | No substitute required — you can take it out of any sentence and it still makes perfect sense |
| Facilitate | To lead a meeting, task or project. A fancy way of saying “run” |
| Deck | A PowerPoint (or similar application) presentation |
| Leverage (as a verb) | In almost all cases, this can be directly replaced with the word “use” |
| Impacted | A positive or negative effect — which always needs parsing from its context. Better words include: “improved”, “helped”, “worsened”, “hurt”, “harmed” or “delayed” |
| House | Get around to finding a place for a document |
| Synthesise | To boil something down to a summary |
Government slang
The public sector speaks a special dialect, and these suggestions barely broach the basics. Our community shared their least favourite government buzzwords — scroll down to add your own!
| Jargonish | Plain English |
|---|---|
| ABC | Agencies, boards and commissions. Its acronym, ABC, is a term often used in place of "public agency". Is there a meaningful difference between a public agency and an ABC? No |
| Framework | A system to organise an idea or a structure around a piece of work |
| Whole of government | Collaboration between government agencies to improve government's policies, programs and services for the benefits of the citizens |
| BI/MI | It's all just data. It's the data that someone pulls from a computer system so they can analyse it and put it in tables or charts for meetings or reports, but it is essentially data put into a summary |
| Upskilling | Can’t you just say “training”? |
| Battle rhythm | “Recurring meetings” but for people who want to feel like army generals |
| Value engineering | Cost-cutting, or — more likely — corner-cutting |
| Birdtable | A regular meeting: although we did find this article when researching it: Ducks, disease and birdtables: How APHA civil servants deal with bird flu |
| Efficiency | This is more likely to mean “fewer people working longer hours” than bold new inventions |
| FTE | Full-Time Equivalent — one FTE is one person doing full-time hours |
| Brief | A pithy note informing a colleague or senior officer of a situation and suggestions on a range of options and actions |
| Engage | An impersonal catchall term for communication. There are more human alternatives like “talk”, “discuss”, “respond”, “ask”, “enquire”, “help”, “support”, or even “think about” |
| Vulnerable populations | People who are often left behind or can’t access essential services. This is frequently due to a lack of representation and visibility in policymaking |
| Plenary | A gathering of everyone involved in a project or committee who otherwise meet and work in smaller subgroups |
Phrases we’d rather not see
Buzzwords might seem like solitaire animals, but they often move in herds. Here are our community picks for phrases that are vague, over-used or simply fall flat.
| Jargonish | Plain English |
|---|---|
| As we proceed on a go-forward basis | “As we continue” |
| End of play | When a deadline for something is the end of the working day. The trouble is, the “end of the day” is different for everyone, be specific |
| Hold the pen | “You're in charge of drafting this” |
| Bang the drum | An unnecessarily warlike way of saying “I openly like something” |
| RAG | Red - Amber - Green. A method for scoring progress/risk/confidence on a range of different items in one topic |
| In the tent | To keep the information confidential and not to be shared outside of the group |
| Let's not boil the ocean | “Let's keep this whole thing realistic” |
Thank you to Jack Buckee, Aaron Moison, Ann Taylor, Nellah Ndaka, Kevin, Laura Bobak and the rest of our community for sharing their examples of Jargon.
👋 You can write an article like this one! Share your thoughts with a community of public servants. Start writing.
(Image Credit: Pexels)
Log in or sign up to continue the conversation