Tags: jargo

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Thursday, January 21st, 2021

Letters of exclusion

I think my co-workers are getting annoyed with me. Any time they use an acronym or initialism—either in a video call or Slack—I ask them what it stands for. I’m sure they think I’m being contrarian.

The truth is that most of the time I genuinely don’t know what the letters stand for. And I’ve got to that age where I don’t feel any inhibition about asking “stupid” questions.

But it’s also true that I really, really dislike acronyms, initialisms, and other kinds of jargon. They’re manifestations of gatekeeping. They demarcate in-groups from outsiders.

Of course if you’re in a conversation with an in-group that has the same background and context as you, then sure, you can use acronyms and initialisms with the confidence that there’s a shared understanding. But how often can you be that sure? The more likely situation—and this scales exponentially with group size—is that people have differing levels of inside knowledge and experience.

I feel sorry for anyone trying to get into the field of web performance. Not only are there complex browser behaviours to understand, there’s also a veritable alphabet soup of initialisms to memorise. Here’s a really good post on web performance by Harry, but notice how the initialisms multiply like tribbles as the post progresses until we’re talking about using CWV metrics like LCP, FID, and CLS—alongside TTFB and SI—to look at PLPs, PDPs, and SRPs. And fair play to Harry; he expands each initialism the first time he introduces it.

But are we really saving any time by saying FID instead of first input delay? I suspect that the only reason why the word “cumulative” precedes “layout shift” is just to make it into the three-letter initialism CLS.

Still, I get why initialisms run rampant in technical discussions. You can be sure that most discussions of particle physics would be incomprehensible to outsiders, not necessarily because of the concepts, but because of the terminology.

Again, if you’re certain that you’re speaking to peers, that’s fine. But if you’re trying to communicate even a little more widely, then initialisms and abbreviations are obstacles to overcome. And once you’re in the habit of using the short forms, it gets harder and harder to apply context-shifting in your language. So the safest habit to form is to generally avoid using acronyms and initialisms.

Unnecessary initialisms are exclusionary.

Think about on-boarding someone new to your organisation. They’ve already got a lot to wrap their heads around without making them figure out what a TAM is. That’s a real example from Clearleft. We have a regular Thursday afternoon meeting. I call it the Thursday afternoon meeting. Other people …don’t.

I’m trying—as gently as possible—to ensure we’re not being exclusionary in our language. My co-workers indulge me, even it’s just to shut me up.

But here’s the thing. I remember many years back when a job ad went out on the Clearleft website that included the phrase “culture fit”. I winced and explained why I thought that was a really bad phrase to use—one that is used as code for “more people like us”. At the time my concerns were met with eye-rolls and chuckles. Now, as knowledge about diversity and inclusion has become more widespread, everyone understands that using a phrase like “culture fit” can be exclusionary.

But when I ask people to expand their acronyms and initialisms today, I get the same kind of chuckles. My aversion to abbreviations is an eccentric foible to be tolerated.

But this isn’t about me.

Sunday, March 8th, 2020

The 3 Laws of Serverless - Burke Holland

“Serverless”, is a buzzword. We can’t seem to agree on what it actaully means, so it ends up meaning nothing at all. Much like “cloud” or “dynamic” or “synergy”. You just wait for the right time in a meeting to drop it, walk to the board and draw a Venn Diagram, and then just sit back and wait for your well-deserved promotion.

That’s very true, and I do not like the term “serverless” for the rather obvious reason that it’s all about servers (someone else’s servers, that is). But these three principles are handy for figuring out if you’re building with in a serverlessy kind of way:

  1. You have no knowledge of the underlying system where your code runs.
  2. Scaling is an intrinsic attribute of the technology; so much so that it just happens automatically.
  3. You only pay for what you use.

Abstraction; scale; consumption.

Thursday, June 27th, 2019

Thursday, February 28th, 2019

Getting help from your worst enemy

Onboarding. Reaching out. In terms of. Synergy. Bandwidth. Headcount. Forward planning. Multichannel. Going forward. We are constantly bombarded and polluted with nonsense speak. These words and phrases snag and attach themselves to our vocabulary like sticky weeds.

Words become walls.

I love this post from Ben on the value of plain language!

We’re not dumbing things down by using simple terms. We’re being smarter.

Read on for the story of the one exception that Ben makes—it’s a good one.

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2018

Use the words normal people use

When you’re struggling to write something that sounds clear and sounds human (two of the essential basics of a good blog post, I’d argue), just use the words normal people would use.

John Spencer: “There’s no bullshit like design bullshit” - Design Week

If we use jargon, we reveal our insecurity. If we use pretentious language, we expose our arrogance. But if we use language that anyone can understand, people are much more likely to value what we do.

Sunday, December 13th, 2015

Simplified JavaScript Jargon

An A-Z of JavaScript jargon (although some of the “explanations” could do with de-jargonifying themselves).

Monday, November 24th, 2014

Silicon Valley Job Title Generator

This could come in useful for updating the Clearleft website.

Saturday, April 12th, 2014

Avoiding ‘words to avoid’ | Inside GOV.UK

I love the thinking behind this plugin that highlights the weasel words that politicians are so found of.

Wednesday, August 7th, 2013

Design Jargon Bullshit

Fodder for a Markov chain.

Monday, April 18th, 2011

Translation From MS-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Dean Hachamovitch’s “Native HTML5″ announcement [dive into mark]

Mark Pilgrim translates Dean Hachamovitch’s utterly bizarre and nonsensical announcement of IE10 that kept talking about “native HTML5.”

Monday, October 18th, 2010

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

Unsuck It

An excellent resource for deciphering corporate business-speak gibberish (I'm going to need this when I'm eavesdropping on Andy Budd making phone calls).

Friday, May 14th, 2010

New Programming Jargon — Global Nerdy

Some of the best neologisms in programming, many of them to do with bug-fixing.

Friday, February 27th, 2009

List of Words it is NOT ok to ever say.

Glad to see "webinar" on this list. Shame about "lifestream."

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

Douchespeak

Ridiculing the empty language of the corporate world one putrid word at a time.