IT jargon, explained
Jargon is the shorthand of a group: useful between specialists, confusing for everyone else. IT and corporate life produce a lot of it, from acronyms such as SLA, MFA and CI/CD to buzzwords like synergy, leverage and low-hanging fruit. This translator replaces those terms with plain words and explains each one, so you can understand a message, or rewrite your own so others do.
Why plain language matters
Plain language is faster to read, easier to act on and less likely to be misunderstood, especially by people outside your team, in another department or reading in their second language. In IT, unclear messages have real costs: an incident update that managers can't follow, a security instruction users ignore, a project status that hides a problem behind "alignment" and "visibility".
Common acronyms at a glance
| Acronym | Stands for | In plain English |
|---|
| SLA | Service level agreement | The promised availability and response times |
| MFA | Multi-factor authentication | Logging in with an extra check, like a code |
| SSO | Single sign-on | One login for many applications |
| CI/CD | Continuous integration / delivery | Automatically testing and releasing changes |
| RTO / RPO | Recovery time / point objective | How fast we must be back, how much data we may lose |
| MTTR | Mean time to recovery | How long fixing an outage takes on average |
| MVP | Minimum viable product | The simplest version worth releasing |
| KPI / OKR | Key performance indicator / objectives and key results | The numbers and goals we track |
| LLM / RAG | Large language model / retrieval-augmented generation | AI that writes text / that answers from your documents |
How the translator works
It looks for every term and its variants (plural forms, abbreviations, spellings like on-premise and on-prem), longest phrases first, so "multi-factor authentication" wins over "authentication". Each match is replaced by a short plain phrase, keeping a capital letter at the start of a sentence. The result is a rough translation that shows what the text says; for a message you send, rewrite the sentences in your own words.
The jargon meter and readability score
The jargon meter counts how many words in your text belong to a recognised term. Under 5% reads as plain English; above 25% is buzzword bingo. The readability number is the Flesch reading ease score, from 0 (very hard) to 100 (very easy), based on sentence length and syllables per word. Most business writing scores between 30 and 50; aim for 60 or more for a wide audience. The score is designed for English text.
Tips for writing without jargon
Spell out an acronym the first time you use it. Replace verbs like "leverage" and "action" with "use" and "do". Say what will happen, who does it and when, instead of "we'll circle back to align". Explain impact in the reader's terms: "you can't log in between 8 and 9" instead of "planned downtime of the IdP". Keep a term when your audience really uses it, and explain it once.
Meeting bingo
Buzzword bingo is an old office joke: a card full of phrases that you tick off when someone says them. Pick a theme, print a fresh card or keep it open on your laptop, and see who reaches five in a row first. Just don't shout "bingo" in the board meeting.