> Summary: I look at the phrase 'strike a balance' in different languages,

It is interesting that you picked up on "strike a balance" which has
been a standard English phrase for a very long time rather than the much
more resent, (and itself a form of jargon), "dumbing down".

The other point is that the use of Jargon is often as a form of
shorthand so as to avoid excessive verbosity, (or long windedness).

We are (maybe) mingling two issues here -- there is an important distinction between idiomatic expressions ("striking a balance", "dumbing down") and technical terms (jargon).

If you want to make it easier for non-native english speakers to understand -- minimal use of idiomatic expressions is a good idea. They really don't serve much real purpose, other than making the prose more colorful and friendly (to those that understand it). Sometimes a bit of brevity is gained, but not much.

Technical jargon, on the other hand, can be very helpful for precision and compactness.

(side note -- are all domain-specific technical term "jargon"? I tend to see "jargon" as having a negative connotation -- specifically that it isn't required for technical specificity. That is, "jargon" is language that is unnecessarily domain specific)

I think it's pretty important to use the common domain specific terms in introductory texts -- how else will folks learn them? So I make a distinction between *using* a technical term, and *introducing* a technical term.

In fact, in my PR on Jonathan's doc on None, I deliberately introduced the term "Singleton" -- not because it was necessary to understand the idea at hand, but because people are likely to encounter the term elsewhere.

-CHB

Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer

Emergency Response Division
NOAA/NOS/OR&R (206) 526-6959   voice
7600 Sand Point Way NE   (206) 526-6329   fax
Seattle, WA 98115   (206) 526-6317   main reception

Chris.Barker@noaa.gov