1) Specialised language concerned with a particular subject, culture, or profession
2) Language characterised by pretentious vocabulary or meaning
3) Gibberish
Any or all indeed of those sound familiar in photography, design, print and colour management??
Having worked in the technology sector for most of my working life I have become accustomed to the jargon heavy influence of this business. In truth I expect whatever industry you are in the Three Letter Acronym (TLA) syndrome is pretty strong; but when you dive into the world of colour management it not just that there is the usual industry jargon and TLA’s, but to be honest even the real words seem a bit made up to me.
I remember walking into Color Confidence just over 5 years ago and being confronted by talk of ‘Spectros’, RIPs, RAW and metamarism. To be honest for some time I was wondering whether it was bit of an elaborate joke at my expense.
I find the use of Jargon interesting. The first and most amusing is the use of Jargon to prove how clever you are. Have you ever had a conversation with someone when every second word is a mystery to you and you end up feeling either entirely dumbfounded or just inadequate? I’m not sure it’s deliberate in a lot of cases; I just think we all get wrapped up in our own world sometimes and the application of these words and phrases just seems normal.
This often extends into the TLA monotony of people speaking in shortened words so much that they sounds like a text message being read out.
I for one completely understand the use of Jargon and why we look for shortened words and phrase – I mean who really wants to go round talking about Raster Image Processors all the time, when a RIP will do.
But, at the same time I think we all need to understand that if you’re new to this or just haven’t been in the loop for a while, you shouldn’t be shut out just because you don’t know what a word or phrase means.
I think the business we are in needs more good people and more people to understand it, and I think being simple in our use of language – or taking the time to explain when we are necessitated to use a horror word – can only help us all.
At Color Confidence we know that we have been guilty of this jargon sin in the past and will be in the future!
With this in mind we thought we’d do something about it…
Firstly:
Let’s hear from you… – what words are used all the time in this sector that you don’t understand? Maybe it’s in photography and people are always going on about CCD’s or stops or RAW. Maybe it’s in the design world, or maybe it’s something everyday that would be good for us all to know about!
Secondly:
Color Confidence is about to launch our very own Jargon Buster. It’s not live yet, but keep you eye out next week, when we kick things off with a selection of phrases and terms which we think could do with explaining. We will then update this on a regular basis with either a single new word every so often (maybe you have asked for one to be done), or a particular set of words relating to a subject.
So keep your eye out for the new Jargon buster and let us know which jargon you would like to see busted – we’ll give it our best shot!
Javan Bramhall
Marketing manager