OPEN

I was writing a post in my kitchen yesterday when a friend who is a mainstream, feature-writing journalist popped round to drop off a CD. We got talking about my blog and I let her take a look.

She was basically complimentary, but laughed out-loud at some of the techie and (her words) marketing lingo, I use. She singled out "re-purposing" and "cluetrain-like" as two big offenders.

It reminded me of my favourite word – shibboleth – which describes one of the biggest sins in communicating. Using exclusive terminology, language that is used to denote membership of a group.

Sometimes you do it without thinking. You forget your audience and you start spewing acronyms and phrases that mean nothing to anyone outside your company, industry, whatever.

I remember a philosophy lecturer describing the need for ever more complex language to be able to express precise meaning when discussing complex subjects. There is also a need to create new language when new concepts and ideas emerge in society. If you can’t create a useful lexicon, workable ways of describing how new things work, you won’t communicate them properly, they won’t be understood or used as widely.

It also made me think about who my audience is. Yes, I thought about both of you.

But seriously, a bit more plain English is in order. Reaching for an Economist style-guide right now…