What most people get wrong when giving technical explanations… And how to get it right

Photo by Thomas T on Unsplash

You’ve probably sat through a talk where the speaker throws in technical terms that only half the room understands. Unfamiliar jargon kills an explanation before it’s started. The audience is wasting mental effort thinking, “do I know that term?”, “could it mean this?”, while you’re rolling on in blissful ignorance. If you use a word they don’t know without explaining what it means, they have no way to fit that into their existing mental model. They’re trying to find a shelf to put that word onto while you’re throwing even more words at them. And eventually, everything drops to the floor.

So, what to do instead? At best, avoid jargon altogether. At least, explain the idea, then label it.

Let’s look at some examples. Here’s a memo about a change to how a company introduces new employees to the team:

The onboarding workflow has been restructured to prioritise cross-functional knowledge transfer and collaborative enablement.

Full of unnecessary jargon. Now try this:

We’ve redesigned how we integrate new joiners into our company to help teams learn from each other faster.

No mental effort required – the picture is painted for you.

Here are some more examples of jargon-heavy sentences, rewritten for clarity.

❌This module supports executive function through the implementation of structured metacognitive strategies.

✅This module helps students plan, reflect, and stay focused by teaching them how to think about their own thinking.

❌The interface features an adaptive algorithm that personalises the UX for optimal cognitive engagement.

✅The platform adjusts to each user, offering a learning experience that feels intuitive and keeps them focused.

❌The new feature facilitates asynchronous collaboration through integrated, cloud-native knowledge repositories.

✅The new feature makes it easy for teams to share and update information online, even when they’re working at different times.

❌The Company is a leading B2B provider of outsourced FM services to commercial real estate owners.

✅The Company cleans and maintains office buildings for its customers.

❌This publication leverages cognitive science to optimise the transmission of complex conceptual frameworks across diverse audience segments through structured explanatory heuristics.

✅This article helps you explain things clearly so people actually understand you.

Jargon and Concision

“But jargon helps me be more concise!” I hear you say. Yes, sometimes that’s true. But is it worth it?

Let’s consider another example.

A/B testing revealed that our new design was 70% more effective.

If your audience doesn’t know what A/B testing is, they’re lost. But even if they do, this sentence requires some decoding: “Ah, A/B testing, that’s when we present two versions of the same thing to see which works better.” Only then can the audience begin absorbing the important information.

The version below, on the other hand, paints the picture for them, so they don’t have to remind themselves of the definition; they can focus all their working memory on the important finding.

We showed our old and new designs to two groups of customers to see which worked better. The new one resulted in 70% more sales.

The key question for you as the explainer is this: does my explanation automatically conjure an image in the reader’s mind, or do they have to do some work to conjure it themselves? If the latter, then you must weigh the cost of that work against the benefit of the concision that any jargon may provide.

Explain, Then Label

Sometimes, we do need jargon. Once it’s embedded in your audience’s long-term memory, it does speed things up! And jargon can help you communicate more concisely and precisely once that shared understanding is there. But beware, what may not seem like jargon to you could be jargon for your audience! So, wherever possible, describe it first, then introduce the label.

This is another way of looking at a principle I addressed in a previous article: concrete before abstract. Let’s revisit the explanation of supply and demand I critiqued in that article through the lens of jargon:

Supply and demand describe the relationship between the availability of goods and the price consumers are willing to pay. As supply decreases and demand remains high, prices rise; as supply increases and demand remains low, prices fall.

This explanation frontloads the jargon “supply” and “demand”, without applying them to a specific scenario the audience can picture.

Instead, let’s explain first, then label:

Imagine you’re trying to buy a ticket to a sold-out concert. Lots of people want tickets and there aren’t many left. That means resellers can charge way more than the original price. In other words, demand is greater than supply, and that pushes up prices.

Now imagine the same concert, but there are thousands of empty seats. Ticket prices drop to fill the seats. That’s because supply is greater than demand.

The new version starts with something familiar before introducing the jargon. And I’d argue this is more effective for novices and experts alike.

This article is based on a chapter from my book ExplAIn Yourself - available on Amazon if you want to explore any of these ideas in more detail.