5 reasons to eliminate jargon

Jargon is a beast that many writers battle regularly.

I made the following edits to the first paragraph of an article for my company’s website. The article was written by one of our in-house cyber security experts.

Original sentence:

“Cyber criminals are using a spectrum of attack vectors—ransomware, phishing attacks and other malware infections—to obtain illicit access to electronic protected health information (ePHI).”

Revised sentence:

“Cyber criminals are using a spectrum of tools—ransomware, phishing attacks and other malware infections—to obtain access to electronic protected health information (ePHI).”

The author of this paragraph insisted that we keep the term “attack vectors” because “this is the nomenclature used in cyber-security literature.”

However, the post was not intended for “cyber-security literature,” but instead, for an audience of non-technical clients.

This brings me to the topic of jargon. Here are five reasons you should avoid it in your writing—and why you should edit it out of other people’s writing: