In praise of jargon

If you thought “stakeholder engagement” meant agreeing to marry someone who aids and abets the killing of vampires, then there is good news today from Harrow council.

Such jargon is to be banned from the council’s communications with the public and replaced with plain English expressions such as “asking people what they think”.

Acronyms such as “CPZs” (controlled parking zones) will once again just be “double yellow lines” and terms such as “civic amenity sites” will be revert to being “rubbish tips”.

Local government does incredibly complex work and a lot of its jargon was foisted on it by central government dictat so I don’t think we should blame council officers for confusing language, but it’s great to see Harrow tackling the issue head on.

Every job has its jargon. The newspaper trade is full of it – sidebars, crossheads, widows and so on - and I recall a military expression that made me chuckle. Covering a territorial army exercise as a reporter, it was explained to me that the most important items of kit a soldier could ever have were MPCs or mobile personnel carriers. On closer enquiry this turned out to mean a sturdy pair of boots.

Later a cartographer told me how he had spent much of the 1960s involved in LSD, by which he meant “large-scale development” maps.

It’s obviously good practice to avoid confusing terms and stick to plain English, but I suspect jargon just has a way of creeping into any line of work and it will be with us for a long time to come.