Jargon busting
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2011-01-30 00:05:40 - Graham Ellis
I've been reading a report on a minor railway accident which could have been much more serious - a crane driver swung a piece of rail he was replacing on one track in front of a train that was approaching on another line - [report here], and it struck me as I read just how many abbreviations / acronyms / referencing numbers there were:1D76, 4BA, AP, ATSM, ATSM1, ATWS, CC1, CIRAS, COSS, DE21, ES, GE/RT8000, IMDU, LOLER, NR/L2/OHS/00112, NR/L2/OHS/019, NR/L2/OHS/040, NR/L2/RMVP/0203, NR/L3/INI/TK0042, NR/L3/MTC/MG0210, NR/L3/MTC/PL0159, NR/L3/OCS/041, NR/L3/OPS/047, NR/L3/RVE/0168, NR/L3/TRK/1011, NR/L3/TRK/6001, NRN, OTP, PICOP, PPE, RAIB, RMMM, RRV, SSOWPS, T2, T7, TMC06, TSM, TSM/ATSM, TSM1, UK and XC
Now - to be fair to the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB), almost all of the terms were bracketed like I have just done with RAIB the first time they occurred in the text, but still I found myself playing mental gymnastics and wondering if there would have been an alternative; spelling it out every time would have made for a wordy report as the terms came thick and fast, in strings in a sentence, but I do wonder if a shortened description could have been used.
"person in charge of the possession (PICOP)" says the text the first time he is mentioned. then there are lots of PICOPs - sentences line "The RRV operator, COSS, PICOP and ATSM1 had all the qualifications required ..."
How about:
"person in charge of the possession (gaffer)" the first time he is mentioned. then "The crane driver, safety chap, gaffer and section manager had all the qualifications required ..."
I have similar misgivings when I introduce new delegates to Object Orientation. My language could - very easily - get peppered with classes and objects, statics and dynamics, constructors and destructors, subclasses and superclasses, overriding and overloading, abstract and virtual, inheritance and interfaces, encapsulation and polymorphism. In order to ensure that delegates leave with a clear understanding of all the terms they'll come across later on, I do introduce these terms as we go along the way, but gently, starting off with common terms and phrases to introduce the concepts.