”LWBJ - got the CCH DAU access. 🎉” This was a Slack message I received during the first few weeks at a new job. The party popper emoji was my clue that this was a good thing, but I had no idea *what* any of it meant. So I wrote back, “I think I understand DAU (daily active users). CCH is a customer, right? … What is LWBJ? 😆” Turns out I was wrong about DAU (Data Axcess Utility), CCH was *not* a customer but rather a product by Wolters Kluwer, and LWBJ was a customer. Three strikes. In this kind of situation, it’s easy for the person who doesn’t understand the jargon to feel foolish or stupid, but that’s not really the case. Rather than speed up the flow of communication, unfamiliar acronyms slow down communication because people either have to ask lots of clarifying questions or, worse, they pretend they understand what the other person is saying, creating an illusion of shared understanding. When the latter occurs, any perceived time savings in the onset results in an exponential amount of lost time at the outset. Related: - [[Shared understanding happens through conversation]]. - [[Using jargon tricks us into the illusion of knowledge]].