Reducing Jargon
Enter your revision in the box below each exercise. Click the “+” below each box to see Dr. Hirst’s revision.
Exercise #1:
Edit these sentences to remove unnecessary jargon. Don’t damage accuracy in the process. And don’t look at the professor’s edit before you try out your own translation!
1. Putrefaction of bovine intestinal structures had progressed to an advanced stage before inception of autopsy.
2. Attempts to interface inhomogeneous, non-synchronized systems with existing systems must not be attempted.
3. Elevated measures to augment decision-making capabilities must be undertaken.
4. Meticulous and unremitting surveillance is necessitated if we are to ascertain the provenance of this problematic situation.
5. The legal corporation’s numismatic accumulation was insufficient for the entrepreneurial enterprise previously delineated in verbal form by its appointed facilitators.
6. It is imperative that we achieve expeditious facilitation of machine initiation.
Exercise #2: The following “old sayings” have been hit by a jargon ray! Have fun returning them to their original forms. [I did not create these particular disguises. You can find these kinds of sentences and other fun stuff at Smart Words.]
1. Members of an avian species of identical plumage congregate.
2. Surveillance should precede saltation.
3. Pulchritude possesses solely cutaneous profundity.
4. It is fruitless to become lachrymose over precipitately departed lacteal fluid.
5. Freedom from encrustations of grime is contiguous to possessing divine attributes.
6. It is impossible to indoctrinate a superannuated canine in innovative maneuvers.
7. The temperature of the aqueous content of an unremittingly ogled culinary receptacle does not reach 212 degrees Fahrenheit.
8. All articles that coruscate with resplendence are not truly auriferous.
9. Where are visible vapors having their provenance in ignited carbonaceous materials, there is conflagration.
10. A plethora of individuals with expertise in culinary techniques vitiates the potable concoction.
11. Male cadavers are incapable of yielding any testimony.
12. Individuals who make their abode in vitreous edifices would be advised to refrain from catapulting petrous projectiles.
13. Exclusive dedication to necessitous chores without interludes of hedonistic divergence renders Jack a hebetudinous youth of male gender.
14. Exigency is the gynecoid progenitor of innovation.
15. The person presenting the ultimate risibility possesses thereby the optimal risibility.
16. Missiles composed of arboreal xylem, or of petrous consistency, have the potential of fracturing my corporeal structure, but appellations will eternally remain innocuous.
17. An addlepated beetlehead and his numismatic accumulations are expeditiously divaricated.
18. Do not apprise a tome based singularly on its integument.
19. Do not exchange equines at the medial point in a runnel.
20. A revolving lithic conglomerate accumulates no congeries of a small, green, byrophic plant.
21. Purgatory lacks knowledge of any aggravated vexation compared to a member of the muliebrious gender rejected.
Now try your hand at de-jargonizing an entire paragraph. Type your revisions in the boxes below, then (and only then) have a look at the professor’s revision.
“Inquiries regarding the benefits conferrable upon individuals by the country to which they belong should not be effected; on the contrary, individual members of the body politic should make inquires in regard to the services that can be rendered for the benefit of the national entity of which they are constituent members.”
“Indeed dialectical critical realism may be seen under the aspect of Foucauldian strategic reversal of the unholy trinity of Parmenidean/Platonic/Aristotelean provenance; of the Cartesian-Lockean-Humean-Kantian paradigm, of foundationalisms (in practice, fideistic foundationalisms) and irrationalisms (in practice, capricious exercises of the will-to-power or some other ideologically and/or psycho-somatically buried source) new and old alike; of the primordial failing of western philosophy, ontological monovalence, and its close ally, the epistemic fallacy with its ontic dula; of the analytic problematic laid down by Plato, which Hegel served only to replicate in his actualist monovalent analytic reinstatement in transfigurative reconciling dialectical connection, while in his hubristic claims for absolute idealism, he inaugurated the Comtean, Kierkegaardian and Nietzschean eclipses of reason, replicating the fundaments of positivism through its transmutation route to the superidealism of a Baudrillard.”
Here’s one you CAN do. Bring to bear all the techniques you’ve learned from working through units 1-4 (use active voice, denominalize, trim fat, and reduce jargon):
Given the highly complex and perennially shifting nature of establishing criteria for toxicity standards, it has been decided that DOE managers shall utilize a simplified and attenuated list of regulatory guidelines when orienting contractors. Consequently, in view of the fact that rapid dissemination of these revised regulatory communications is now in the imperative, we want to point out the vial importance of all managers becoming cognizant of the particular regulations most applicable to the sites under their immediate responsibility, and using said attenuated descriptions for the purpose of contractor orientation. Also, in the event that contractual work involves surface waters such as streams flowing through a D&D site, remember that influx from contaminant source areas must be remediated at upstream points of entry before remedial operations are initiated for the stream at locations further down.