One of the primary goals of any serious journalist is to take whatever they are writing about, and cover it in plain, simple English so that anyone, regardless of prior knowledge, can understand the story. Journalists are, after all, communicators, and if we write long, unwieldy sentences full of big words and waffle, we’re not communicating much except our large vocabularies.
The ICT industry, needless to say, is a fine example of an industry that wouldn’t know how to extract the jargon and BS from the facts if its life was on the line. In fact, its life may be on the line, specifically for that reason. How about this: “”Various influencing factors are transitioning to a point where embedded 3G will become superior from a cost perspective compared with previously used alternatives, such as Wi-Fi hot spots and hotel broadband for wide-area use,” said Leslie Fiering, research vice president at Gartner.”
Aside from anything else, reading that gives me a headache. The ICT industry is full of acronyms, many of which have multiple meanings. It’s also full of BS, ‘world-leading, leading-edge, unique’, yadda, yadda, yadda. Most of the people who use the jargon and acronyms do not really understand what they mean. If they knew what they were talking about they would be able to do so without using the BS that baffles.
Even worse, target audiences, like my readers, don’t necessarily understand the waffle either, and moreover, they do not care. Why is this important? Well, for a start there’s the age old business/IT divide. A good way to bridge it may be for the ICT guys to start speaking English. And here I do not mean internal IT people (although that would help too) but the vendors, resellers, systems integrators and so on who apparently believe their marketing collateral to such a degree that they are unable to say a word without repeating it, almost verbatim, including all the cludgey, clunky, waffley bits that no sane person can understand.
So here’s a novel approach. How ’bout you buggers trying to sell this stuff talk to your potential customers in English? Talk to the media who have access to your clients in English. Start being honest about what your offering can and cannot do. Because, frankly, it cannot all be world-leading, best in class, revolutionary, unique, innovative, or any other adjective you can think of. We don’t believe it, our readers and your customers don’t believe it. The plain facts in plain English please, that’s all we want.
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