Run a jargon audit on every key explanation
Go word by word through your explanation and mark every term a newcomer would not know.
Key takeaways
- What it is: Go word by word through your explanation and mark every term a newcomer would not know.
- Why it works: Jargon is invisible to its users because it has become the natural label for a concept they no longer have to decode. Experts stop hearing the words as words. A jargon audit forces an explicit pass through the explanation and treats each technical term as a potential break point — restoring the deliberate attention that fluency erased.
- Evidence: Backed by observational / correlational evidence.
- Avoid: Auditing for words you think sound jargon-y rather than for words a novice would actually not know — causing you to simplify cosmetically while leaving the real barriers intact.
Why it works
Jargon is invisible to its users because it has become the natural label for a concept they no longer have to decode. Experts stop hearing the words as words. A jargon audit forces an explicit pass through the explanation and treats each technical term as a potential break point — restoring the deliberate attention that fluency erased.
How to do it
- 1Write out your explanation in full, or record and transcribe it.
- 2Highlight every term that requires more than two years in the field to recognize.
- 3For each highlighted term: either replace it with plain language or define it explicitly the first time it appears.
- 4Read the clean version to a smart non-expert and ask them to flag anything that still feels opaque.
What the evidence says
ObservationalPlain-language research consistently finds that technical documents are understood faster and more accurately after jargon reduction, even by moderately informed audiences. The effect is reliable in health communication and legal writing research.
Honest caveat: Most rigorous studies are in health literacy and legal document comprehension; effects in real-time verbal explanation are plausible but less directly measured.
Common mistake
Auditing for words you think sound jargon-y rather than for words a novice would actually not know — causing you to simplify cosmetically while leaving the real barriers intact.
IX Coach flags terms in your explanations that fall outside a novice’s likely vocabulary and suggests plain-language substitutes, so your ideas land without a glossary.
Practice this with IX Coach →