Experts know all the jargon and abbreviations, but most readers won’t. For example, foreign policy experts know “MAD” refers to the nuclear strategy of “Mutual Assured Destruction.” Psychiatrists and psychologists know that “mental/physical” describes mental distress resulting from a physical injury. Physicians know that “blue bloaters” and “pink puffers” describe people in specific types of respiratory distress, but the average reader would probably guess that they are some kind of fish.
These buzz words, abbreviations and other verbal concoctions are known as jargon. Jargon helps people communicate – if everybody understands it. But since jargon is usually only understood by those in the field, skip it when writing for anyone else. Stick with plain old English. Using a little jargon and immediately defining it can spice up your writing, but a lot of jargon, or any unexplained jargon, will make it unintelligible.
When penning a poem to your loved one, you could say: “My darling, I have entered into a cognitive-affective state characterized by intrusive and obsessive fantasizing concerning reciprocity of my amorant feelings by the object of my amorance.”(1)
Yes, you could say that, but it’s probably better to simply say, “I love you.” You’ll get a much better response.
Notes: 1) The “My darling…” sentence was quoted from the book The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson. William Morrow & Co., 1990, p. 19.
