Legalese: (Was Run-on sentences)

[Carol]

Carol earlier: 
> Here's an example of jargon (not legalese but educationalese) from a handout for a class I once took in Reading Education. (I now understand why I don't recall a single thing I "learned" in that class:
> 
> "Inferential comprehension [is] demonstrated when [a] student uses the ideas and information explicitly stated in a selection, his intuition, and his personal experience as a basis for conjectures and hypotheses. Inferences drawn may be either convergent or divergent in nature and [the] student may or may not be asked to verbalize the rationale underlying his inferences."
> 
> Amanda:  If we have been using "jargon" to mean "the technical usages and terms specific to a particular field or discipline," then I observe that there is not a single word in that example that is jargon.  They are simply very large words, doubtless inaccessible to your "average" reader.  I disagree that big words, in and of themselves, constitute "educationalese."

Carol:
But we haven't been using "jargon" in that sense. I'm not talking about legitimate technical terms ("inferential comprehension" could qualify, I suppose, if we stretch the point); I'm talking about pretentious, pseudo-scholarly writing that tries to sound important but obscures its own point through needlessly complex or abstract diction and indirectness. The intended audience was graduates students in a reading education class.

Amanda:
 If the example had included true field-specific words such as "transfer" or "formative evaluation," then I could agree with your categorization.  So, while the passage is not very clear, its problem is not jargon so much as complex sentence structure and a very high language level.  

Carol:
The whole point is that this passage does *not* use "field-specific words," which are *not* jargon if they are clear to other specialists and have a specific meaning not conveyable through ordinary English. It's needlessly obscure and indirect, and the "very high language level" is nothing of the sort. There's no need to say "Inferences drawn may be either convergent or divergent in nature." It would be better to say, "The student may draw either convergent or divergent inferences" (assuming, of course, that the teacher has already defined the terms "convergent" and "divergent"). The problem here is passive voice, indirectness, wordiness, vagueness, and general unintelligibility.
> 
> Carol:
> But jargon is *needlessly* complicated language. 
> 
> Amanda:  And here is where our point of dissention lies.  This is not my definition of "jargon"; that is my definition of poor writing.  I will never argue with you that there is a growing trend to overuse words to sound self-aggrandizing or important.  Your examples of that sort of writing mistake are spot-on.

Carol:
Good. Thank you. That's my whole point.

Amanda:
  But those are not jargon, to me.  In fact, the case could be made that you, as an editor, are using the term "jargon" in a professionally specific way-- in which case, by my definition, you have been using jargon yourself. <snip>

Carol:
And by my definition, I'd be using a technical term, which is *not* jargon. However, I don't agree that it's a technical term. It's a perfectly common word. If you like, I can substitute another term, "gobbledygook," but "jargon" is shorter, more familiar, and easier to type.

Amanda:
> Which brings me to another relevant point.  This whole discussion seems to have been built on an assumption that the intended audiences, for any and all examples cited, are "the average reader."  That is not always the case. If the intended audience will be familiar with the technical terminology (jargon), then it should indeed be used, because within that particular field or discipline, the use of the correct technical terms *increases* precision in the delivery of that message.  Effective communication doesn't mean "making it clear for the average reader"—it means "making it clear for the intended audience."  

Carol:
Technical terms may, in some cases, increase precision in communications between one specialist and another. Jargon, however, is imprecise by its very nature. And that includes unnecessary pseudo-technical terms like "convergent and divergent inferences" or, in literary criticism, "logocentrism" and "intertextuality").


> 
> Carol: However, it's interesting that many scientists (not Stephen Hawking!)
> manage to escape the shackles of scientific terminology and write beautiful
> books for the general public. They don't sacrifice precision for
> intelligibility. They manage both, sometimes admirably. 
> 
> Amanda:  You illustrate my point.  Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan both are very good at delivering their messages to their intended audiences. Sometimes those audiences were the general public, and the books they produced for that audience were clear, accessible, and enjoyable.  However, I imagine that the papers, articles, and books that they authored for other audiences--their colleagues and other scientists--were quite different and highly technical in nature.  The latter were probably full of "my" jargon (discipline-specific technical terminology), but I very much doubt if they were full of "your" jargon (unnecessary words or phrases, clichés, and the like).  

Carol:
We're talking at cross-purposes. First, I specifically excluded Stephen Hawking from my list of scientists who write well for the general public. (I *would* include Carl Sagan, as well as Loren Eisley, Richard Leakey (an expert in paleontology despite his lack of a college degree), and a number of others whose names I can't remember at the moment.) Second, since we both agree that what I call jargon is bad writing, I'm not sure why we're arguing. As for how scientists communicate among themselves, it has nothing to do with me or my concerns since it doesn't affect the general public in any way (although I would hope for the sake of the scientists that they're not boring or confusing each other with needlessly dry, abstract, and indirect prose). I'm concerned about the proliferation of bad writing both as a bad example for students and aspiring writers and any other effects it might have on the general public (such as the inability to understand ballots and contracts or medical procedures).

Amanda: 
> Good authors use language effectively, whomever they are writing for.  Less skilled authors do not.

Carol:
Of course. I'm an editor. My whole job is to make ineffective writing by unskilled writers effective and publishable. We agree that good writing is effective. Where we obviously disagree is in what constitutes effective writing.

Amanda:
  Jargon is simply one tool available to authors; in the hands of the skilled, it is effective; in the hands of the less skilled, it is obstructive.  

Carol responds:

You mean that technical terminology is one tool available to writers aiming at a particular audience of specialists. And certainly, nonspecialists should not attempt to use those terms, not only because they don't understand them and may use them imprecisely but because their audience won't understand them, either, and will be further confused by their misuse. But that's not what I'm talking about.

At any rate, we agree that writers should use language effectively and that technical terminology is acceptable (perhaps inevitable) in certain contexts. But we're talking at cross purposes because what you're defending (technichal terminology used among specialists) is not what I'm attacking. I'm attacking what you call bad writing and what I call jargon or gobbledygook, which (as I know from my experience as an editor) is only one of many forms of bad writing. (I also encounter mechanical errors, second-language errors, clichés, mixed metaphors, dangling modifiers, misused words, and a host of other problems).

For the record, Merriam-Webster online gives your definition as one of several uses of the term. Here's the full definition:

Main Entry:
    jar·gon 
    \jär-gn, -gän\ 
Function:
    noun 
Etymology:
    Middle English, from Anglo-French jargun, gargon
Date:
    14th century

1 a: confused unintelligible language b: a strange, outlandish, or barbarous language or dialect c: a hybrid language or dialect simplified in vocabulary and grammar and used for communication between peoples of different speech 2: the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group 3: obscure and often pretentious language marked by circumlocutions and long words
— jar·gony \-g-n, -gä-n\ adjective

Mine is, admittedly, the third definition, but it's based on the original concept of confused or unintelligible language. And my complaint is that what I call jargon (and you evidently call bad writing, which, IMO, is too general and imprecise a label) is widespread in both U.S. and UK English.

Let's just say that I'm opposed to pomposity, indirectness, unintelligibility, and the importation of what ought to be technical terms (assuming that they're necessary even there) into everyday English via pop psychology and sociology. Even works by specialists for specialists ought to be as clear and concise as possible, and when the work in question is a journal article, not a legal document or a medical report, it ought also to be *interesting.* "Thou shalt not bore the reader" ought to be a cardinal rule of every professional journal (just as it is for popular magazines). Here's a random example of jargon-filled writing from the Journal of Nursing Education:

"The TREAD© Evidence-Based Practice Model is a framework for faculty to use in graduate research courses so students can become excellent consumers of the best available evidence to use in their clinical decision making in the practice setting. This model is based on competency in information literacy as the basis for developing evidence-based search strategies to find, appraise, and synthesize Level I evidence, including systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and evidence-based practice guidelines. This model emphasizes the use of standardized critical appraisal tools, such as the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) or Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation (AGREE), to facilitate user-friendly rapid appraisal of Level I evidence. Faculty are challenged to embrace this paradigm shift, to unlearn how they learned, and to teach their graduate research course focusing on the importance of Level I evidence to enable their graduates to make informed advanced practice decisions and improve patient outcomes."

If I were a student assigned to read that article, I'd drop the course immediately.

Carol, who is not opposed to legitimate technical terminology in its proper place but is always opposed to imprecision, pomposity, pseudo-scholarship, vagueness, and dullness