To put the ‘Cut the jargon’ tool into practice, let’s try it on this letter:

There’s a lot of jargon and lots of unnecessarily long words in this letter. The information is all there, but you have to work hard to make sense of it.

The writer of this letter probably works in the GP surgery, so they may not realise this . If you use specialist words all the time in your job, it’s easy to forget that not everyone knows what they mean.

But words like these can be a barrier between the reader and the information they need. If the reader has to read your writing several times or get out a dictionary to understand it, that’s not a good sign.

Let’s try cutting the jargon…

By swapping in some shorter words, we’ve made this letter much easier to read. Where we couldn’t replace a word, we’ve made sure it’s clearly explained in the letter.

The good news is, this an easy problem to fix. You’re the expert on this topic, so you’re the best person to help your reader understand it.

Have you got any jargon-busting tactics? Share your tips in the comments below.