Jargon on Academic Websites
It's here, it's there, it's everywhere!
This is an abbreviated version of this article, featuring only the absolute essentials - the full text (including full examples!) is available at Sites@UMBC!
Help! What should we do about jargon?
Jargon and academia often go hand-in-hand, and it's important to understand the nuance of what jargon is and when to address it before diving in to any jargon remediations.
What is jargon?
- the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group - “sports jargon”
- obscure and often pretentious language marked by circumlocutions (the use of an unnecessarily large number of words to express an idea) and long words - “an academic essay filled with jargon”
How to have this discussion
How can we communicate the importance of this to faculty and staff who are publishing content about their research or the department online?
- Start by asking questions: Who do you know reads your content? Who do you imagine or hope reads your content? Who is it possible is reading your content?
- Start small: Some change is always better than no change. Instead of requiring all jargon to be remediated right off the bat, can we compromise on anything being emailed? Content living on the home page?
- Where possible/needed, go to the source: Some faculty can be very particular, and it may be putting staff in a difficult position to ask them to remediate jargon in or about faculty’s work. Instead, involve the faculty member directly in the conversation - or offer to do a workshop for the whole department on the topic.
What does this look like in practice?
Options for remediation:
- Remove jargon and rewrite to a lower reading level
- Offer definitions or explanations for specific words or phrases
- Offer a “lay” version of the original text
These can all be used together, there is no “pick one” requirement.
Should I Remediate All Jargon?
Jargon is everywhere in academia! First, it's important to prioritize what to address based on the following criteria:
- Is this a primary page of my website (the home page, an "about" page, a top-level navigation page)?
- Is this a page that has important information for prospective or current students?
- How many people will view or access this page? Is this a page that receives a high volume of my website's traffic? (Site admins for a Sites@UMBC website can view Google analytics to check their site traffic!)
We recommend creating a plan to handle jargon one page at a time, prioritizing primary, high-traffic pages first. At this point in UMBC's remediation process, we recommend de-prioritizing pages are not also primary, student-facing or high traffic pages that:
- are about individual faculty members or their research history
- are small news updates about upcoming or newly released research (large feature articles or very important research breakthroughs should be considered for jargon!)
- contain research abstracts or book summaries submitted for a specific purpose (e.g., for conferences, panel talks, lectures, etc)
- we recommend updating submission requirements to include a required lay abstract/summary in addition to the standard abstract/summary