3.3.1 Same term, different meanings

You don’t even have to have a specific jargon or technical terms to actually get into trouble with language, and a recent example we’ve had is one of our products involves tracking an object at a distance, locating it and tracking it, and to an engineer, you basically say, ‘Ooh, I’m locking on to something as a target. I’m tracking a target.’

However, when we were communicating this to, to customers, what the system does, they had a completely different connotation to them, because a target to them is something you shoot at. They come from a military context and were surprised that this, that this was some kind of, maybe a weapons-related system, which of course it isn’t. It is a completely innocent commercial product, and then you actually realise that even normal terms can get you into trouble, just because other people, your end users, end customers, may have a different understanding of what it means. Then you need to, you know, bring your marketing people in to actually help smooth out the language, maybe use slightly less precise terms but more acceptable terms.

You know, is that jargon or is that just being able to communicate, you know, correctly with your customers? Either way, you have to make adjustments to the language depending on who, who your audience is.