Give It To Me Straight: Jon Marcus
This is a short article regarding the use of plain, or layman’s English, within the scientific community. Science is a very fascinating thing. There are new twists and intrigues around every corner of each field. It is a very beautiful field, however, oftentimes people who don’t understand words or phrases that seem to have way too many syllables, seem to get lost in the verbiage and not caught up in the meaning. This is where the use of jargon and knowing your audience comes in. If you have a group of scientists together you can easily know who would understand what words. However, if you have a group of businessmen in a room learning about the same thing that the scientists are talking about, the same choice of words would not be appropriate. I personally have learned this the hard way when speaking in a setting where I am talking about my career field, the military, or life here at Norwich. The military is riddled with acronyms that an average person may not understand. I have seen the faces of my friends at home go from wildly intrigued to horribly confused in a few seconds. Albeit entertaining, one still has to be cognizant of their audience, which is the main subject of this snippet of reading. Lastly, this article also talks about teaching those who are studying the sciences proper communication so that way we not only have new scientists, but also those who can communicate their new sciences effectively. I would stretch this further to say that everyone in a profession should be taught proper communication as it would make day to day life and interaction much more simplistic.
