Chapter 42 Avoid jargon as much as possible

If you are a professional technical person—such as a lawyer, physician, engineer, or engaged in a particular business transaction—when you speak to a general audience, remember to use ordinary everyday language, and explain in detail when necessary one time. You have to be extra careful about this because I've heard countless professional presentations where many people just don't notice this and fail.Completely oblivious to the fact that the general public does not understand the particular terms, these speakers leave their audience bewildered and incomprehensible. So, what should you do when you're giving a professional presentation?Here are some suggestions from former Indiana Senator Bee Willizzi that you can use as a reference.

When you start your talk, pick the least intelligent-looking person in the audience and try to get that person interested in what you're talking about.I think that only when you explain your arguments in a simple and clear way can you get good results.An even better way is to choose a little boy or girl from the audience, which will work even better. Tell yourself--if speaking out loud to let the audience know--that you will try to make the child understand what you say, and remember your explanations of many problems.And after the speech, you can tell what exactly you said. The best way to explain technical terms to your audience is to use simple examples for comparison.Here's an example: You're explaining to a group of housewives how to defrost a refrigerator.The following statement is obviously too esoteric and difficult to understand: the function of the refrigerator is based on the principle of "extracting the hot air inside the refrigerator by the evaporator".Once the hot gas is pumped out, the water vapor accompanied by the hot gas is attached to the evaporator, so that it gradually accumulates into frost and forms an insulator.At this time, the evaporator must speed up the rotation of the engine to make up for the insulation effect caused by frost.

If you change the above statement into terms familiar to ordinary housewives, I believe it will be easier to understand: you all know the freezer where the meat is kept in the refrigerator, and you all know that the freezer is often frosted.These frosts will become thicker and thicker, and finally they must be eliminated in order to maintain the freezing effect of the refrigerator.The frost that forms in the refrigerator is like the blanket you put on your bed, or the asbestos in the walls of your house to insulate the temperature.Now, once the frost in the refrigerator is thicker and thicker, it becomes more and more difficult to extract the heat inside, and it becomes more and more difficult for the refrigerator to keep the cold state.At this time, the motor of the refrigerator must work harder to draw out the hot air.If your refrigerator has an automatic defrost device, the refrigerator will last longer.

Aristotle once said: "Think like a wise man; but talk like a man." If you have to use technical language, first elaborate and identify each audience. understand the meaning of those terms.Especially when you encounter keywords that are used repeatedly, you have to pay more attention.