Plain-speaking please

There’s a great story on the BBC website today on a list of banned jargon, compiled by council leaders. The list includes:

· Predictors of beaconicity

· Re-baselining

· Coterminous stakeholder engagement

· Coterminosity

· Mainstreaming

Now I’m on fairly safe ground I think in admitting that here at Microsoft we are guilty of using jargon when we could actually just say it straight. Acronyms are a huge minefield here as well, partly because of the number of products and also because a lot of the product names are very long. It's a habit that's easy to fall into and it does actually cut corners because internally at least, people know what you mean. However, coterminous stakeholder engagement is really just a talking to people. So why don’t we just say it?

When everyone is talking the same language it’s fine, but when you’re talking to people outside that specific community we all need to remember to just talk ‘normally’, otherwise it can be alienating, patronising and a real turn-off for potential customers. (Note to self: maybe I need to send this article to one or two people I know....)

Btw – the article doesn’t actually explain what a predictor of beaconicity is.... any suggestions for a translation?!