One or two days ago I had a conversation on twitter with my dear friends Joanna Young and Brad Shorr about what I have been doing on Squidoo. I mentioned that I was on my way to Giant Squid and had just published a lensography, actually wanting to communicate that I was on my way to have 50 webpages published at the end of the year and that my latest webpage was a directory of all my webpages about and on classical music.
Of course I did not say so. Being a member of the Squidoo community since the end of May 2009 (no, I don’t spend my time swimming in the salty sea, I am still walking on my two feet) made me use the squidoo community language in a matter of course way. I did not realize that not everybody is a squid (Joanna, I can see your face reading this!) and in order to be understood elsewhere I’d have to use words which made clear what I meant.
Language can be a means to shut people out or to give them the feeling that they have been living somewhere near the North Pole and should raise their knowledge to the general level – either you learn fast or we forget you, stupid!
I don’t want to use language that way.
By the way: One of my lenses (=pages) was nominated for the Potential Giant Squid Award 2009 (this is an Award for people like me who are on their way to 50 pages but have not arrived there yet). It is a webpage about Johann Sebastian Bach, and if you want to get an impression about squidoo lenses in general you can visit the page with all the nominated lenses. There’s a lot of very good content there!
Joanna Young
December 4, 2009 at 10:52 am
Thanks for the explanations Ulla… and your very inclusive approach to communication
Brad Shorr
December 4, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Hi Ulla, Your JSB lens is fabulous – simple, engaging, and full of useful and entertaining information. Well done, and congratulations on your nomination. I know how easy it is to accidentally slip into jargon. I find myself doing it on SEO topics and you just hope somebody cares enough to tell you to speak English.
Kathy McGraw
January 6, 2010 at 9:16 pm
What a good reminder for all of us. I find that I too sometimes forget that others might not understand certain jarogn.