>Worth noting: while I'm sure you disapprove of this use of it just as
>much, jargon is often deployed as a kind of street cred on the part of
>the writer or speaker, to prove they're a member of the fraternity, as
>it were.

Jargon has its uses, and that is indeed one of them; I'm annoyed by it, but not nearly as much as I am when someone busts it out solely to establish that he or she is cleverer than the reader. (Richard Dawkins does this a lot. Dawkins is routinely so insufferable I'm vaguely embarrassed to agree with him.)

True story: Once, when I worked at the (now-defunct) local newspaper, I had to write a small item about production being resumed at the (now-defunct) local paper mill. It was just a minor update, as the mill was running normally at that time and had performed a routine shutdown for maintenance. At one point I noted the precise time, according to the mill manager I'd spoken with, when production was considered to have been fully resumed: paper was on the roll at 6:45 PM.

My six-year-old cutlet of an editor changed it to "paper was loaded onto a roll at 6:45 PM", which doesn't mean the same thing at all, and made me look, to the people I'd spoken with and everyone else in town who understood how papermaking works (which was just about everybody in West Podunk in 2004), like I didn't know what the fuck I was talking about. When I called him on it, he replied dismissively, "We don't use jargon here."

My answer was to say something along the lines of, "Do we consider our audience here, or is that no longer considered important at J-school these days?" and clock off for the day, which got me the first of several emails from the publisher saying basically, "Please try not to antagonize Aaron? He emailed me that he wants to 'write you up for insubordination', which isn't even a thing." I cannot prove, but strongly suspect, that he was eventually sacked because he played the "it's that fucking guy or me" card and it didn't go the way he was expecting. That was a strange, strange workplace. The publishers routinely frustrated the shit out of me, and habitually downplayed my abilities as justification for not paying me more, but they valued my work more than they would ever have admitted out loud and were weirdly wary of pushing me too far.

(Something the guy they sold the paper to was not particularly concerned about, but that's another story.)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.