I don't speak C++ but I do have plenty of tech clients. I've come to love them in that
befuddled mix of admiration and head-shaking that we get toward people we
really don't understand, but like nevertheless. The engineering brain is so
different from the writing brain. I'm sure if you autopsied control groups of
both, research would bear this out. (Maybe it already has.)
So I
understood where this Silicon Valley article was coming from, because a third
of what I do for my tech clients is decipher their acronyms and jargon. It
really is a foreign language; I'll get a phone call in which someone earnestly
describes their project on HSC or how they've changed their MSF and need to
communicate that. Whereupon I say, "what?" Managed Services Firewall,
they explain. Whereupon, I say again, "What?"
Not
speaking technicalese can be a benefit for a writer, because I can approach
projects from a customer's viewpoint and bring greater clarity and advocacy to
a piece. Each industry has a lingua franca and it's easy for all of us to fall
into it, so it's helpful to have an outsider pointing out the TLAs (Three
Letter Acronyms) and jargon that sounds like gibberish to the public. The chief
distinction is communicating within the technical sphere and without.
It's
important not to view this as "dumbing down." It's communication.
Getting your point across by speaking the customer's language. It's true that a
lot of commercial collateral is written at a simple level, thanks to declining
literacy. But clarity is never a bad
thing, and neither is education. Which is usually the end goal when tech
companies communicate to their customers - education and persuasion.
Ultimately
all writing is an act of translation.
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