Buzzwords, Acronyms, and Jargon
Participants identify and replace workplace jargon with clear language, improving accessibility and understanding in communication.
Structure
Setup
Participants work individually or in small groups. Each person or group brings examples from their real work context: emails, presentations, meeting language, or documents they've encountered recently that are dense with jargon, acronyms, or buzzwords.
Phase 1: The Jargon Inventory
Each participant lists 10-15 words or phrases from their professional vocabulary that they use frequently but that would be meaningless to an outsider. Include acronyms, technical terms, department-specific language, and currently fashionable phrases ("synergize," "circle back," "move the needle," "bandwidth").
Phase 2: Plain Language Translation
For each item on the inventory, participants write a plain-language replacement - the simplest possible way to say the same thing in words a 12-year-old would understand.
Phase 3: Rewrites
Participants take a sample communication - an email, a presentation slide, a meeting agenda - and rewrite it using only plain language. No jargon, no acronyms without definition, no buzzwords.
Phase 4: Read-Aloud Comparison
Participants read both versions aloud: the original and the plain-language rewrite. The group discusses: what did the plain language reveal that the jargon concealed?
Timing
20-30 minutes for the inventory and translation, 15-20 minutes for the rewrite and comparison.
How to Teach It
How to Explain It
"Write down ten words or phrases you use at work that would confuse your neighbor. Then write what you actually mean in words a twelve-year-old could understand. We'll see what the jargon is hiding."
Why It Matters
Professional jargon serves multiple functions, not all of them communicative: it signals group membership, implies expertise, provides plausible deniability ("we operationalized a strategic pivot"), and allows speakers to avoid the precision that plain language requires. This exercise makes those functions visible. When participants translate their jargon into plain language, they often discover that they don't know as precisely what they mean as they thought - or that what they mean is simpler and more ordinary than the language suggested. The discovery is both humbling and liberating.
Common Coaching Notes
- Don't shame the jargon users. Everyone uses jargon; it's structurally incentivized in most professional environments. The exercise is not about blame but about developing awareness and choice.
- Notice what the jargon was protecting. Sometimes jargon conceals genuine complexity that plain language makes visible in useful ways. Sometimes it conceals vagueness that plain language makes embarrassing. Both are valuable to surface.
- The read-aloud step is essential. Hearing the difference between the two versions makes the contrast concrete in a way that reading alone doesn't.
Debrief Questions
- What did you discover when you tried to translate your jargon?
- What was the jargon doing that plain language didn't?
- Who in your organization doesn't have access to the conversation because of the language you use?
In Applied Settings
Organizational Context
Buzzwords, Acronyms, and Jargon addresses a structural communication challenge in most organizations: the professional language that insiders use fluently is opaque to anyone outside the in-group - junior employees, cross-functional colleagues, clients, new hires, and community members who interact with the organization. This opacity creates real costs: missed information, exclusion, miscommunication, and a general erosion of communicative clarity.
Workplace Applications
The exercise is particularly valuable for communications teams, leadership development programs, cross-functional project kickoffs, and any organizational context where diverse audiences need to understand the same information. It is also especially effective when the organization is going through a period of significant change - reorganizations, strategy shifts, technology transformations - where precise, accessible communication is especially important and especially rare.
Inclusive Communication
For organizations with stated commitments to inclusion and belonging, the jargon exercise provides a concrete, practical connection between language and inclusion: professional jargon is often a marker of in-group membership that creates barriers for people entering from outside the in-group, whether they are new employees, people from underrepresented backgrounds, or cross-functional partners without shared vocabulary. Plain language is an inclusion practice, not just a communication preference.
Facilitator Notes for Teams
The most productive use of this exercise in team settings involves identifying jargon in specific, shared documents or communication channels that the team actually uses. The combination of real examples and deliberate plain-language translation produces immediate, transferable improvements in the team's actual communication quality. Participants often leave with specific word-swap commitments for upcoming communications.
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How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Buzzwords, Acronyms, and Jargon. Retrieved September 28, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/exercises/buzzwords-acronyms-and-jargon
The Improv Archive. "Buzzwords, Acronyms, and Jargon." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/exercises/buzzwords-acronyms-and-jargon.
The Improv Archive. "Buzzwords, Acronyms, and Jargon." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/exercises/buzzwords-acronyms-and-jargon. Accessed September 28, 2026.
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