Cultivating inclusivity: Delete the jargon
Support workplace diversity initiatives through clear content and storytelling
Are you looking to make your content more inclusive this year? A good first step is to delete corporate jargon.
Don’t just remove it from your company’s diversity and inclusion storytelling. Scan all your content: internal emails, external articles, customer communications, and job descriptions.
Use precise, universally understood terms instead.
Why?
At best, jargon can lead to misunderstanding or lack of clarity. At worst, it can make people—your employees, your customers— feel excluded or ashamed because they don’t know what it means.
Lead with empathy and communicate in a way that creates confidence and understanding for everyone.
The TL;DR example
The first time I read TL;DR, I felt embarrassed because I didn’t know what the term meant. It was the equivalent of “is everyone hanging out without me?” in word form.
So instead of feeling connected to the intended message, I was in my head trying to figure out what this term meant. After it happened a few more times, I started to tune out.
Throwing a random acronym at the top of your content doesn’t make people feel like they’re part of something cool. It pulls them out of the connection you’re trying to create with your content.
If your piece is too long, instead of TL;DR try:
Rewriting it to be more concise
Taking a different angle that is more compelling
Inserting paragraph breaks
Using a hierarchy of font sizes to break up the text
Replacing some words with graphics or bullets
Summarizing at the end
What to use instead of jargon
Absolutely need to use jargon?
Maybe certain terms are core to your organization’s culture.
You can still use them—just make sure you define them for everyone. Make it part of your employee onboarding and add definitions to your intranet. Or try a storytelling approach to illustrate what you mean. What does "scalable," "MVP" or "start-up culture" look like at your company? Use words that employees and customers use naturally—they’ll be more likely to repeat it.
Heck, you should even define what “inclusive” looks and feels like at your organization.
Shared understanding goes a long way toward building trust in the workplace.
If you're thinking about reworking your corporate lingo this year, I can help. As a freelance content writer, I offer content marketing services to make corporate communications more inclusive and strategic. Let’s connect to get started.
