PureBlogging

So, you’ve all heard about Starbucks, right? They’re closing down something like 600 stores in an effort to get everyone to stop making jokes about how there are Starbucks cropping up all over the damn place. Also, they’re apparently hemorrhaging money like crazy.

But I know the answer, and it’s so simple that I’m going to offer it to Starbucks right here, at no cost.

The answer is vocabulary.

And bloggers can learn a lot from Starbucks’ mistake.

Let me explain.

This morning, after some pointless shopping at my local Target, I stopped at Starbucks for the one drink I enjoy there: A green tea frappucino. I know that’s what it’s called because it’s not on the menu, and someone served it to me by accident once. Since then it’s taken me about five visits to get the name right, because Starbucks refuses to treat me like an adult.

What they do have is something called a “green tea latte.” And the frappucino is simply an ice-blended version of that. But the one time I tried to order a medium ice-blended green tea latte, the barista behind the counter began to sputter, as though she were a super-intelligent omni-computer and I were Captain Kirk asking it the meaning of life.

Because I didn’t use the prescribed lexicon — I should have said “grande green tea frappucino” — she didn’t know what to do. We had to have an entire conversation about the difference between an iced latte and a frappucino, and how “ice blended” means blended with ice in a blender, whereas “frappucino” means the exact same thing, and how I really was rather stupid for not learning all of the same terms she’d learned in her Starbucks training.

The complaint about the complicated language one must adopt simply to oder coffee is a mainstay of bad stand-up comedy, so I know I’m not the only one frustrated by it. And this morning, as I listened to the guy behind the counter shout out increasingly complex drink orders (”Nonfat venti iced mocha latte light ice!”) as the queued-up customers looked at each other with the puzzled expressions we adopt when we don’t know whose order is whose*, I realized that Starbucks has been claimed by the tyranny of jargon.

Jargon is, overall, a good thing. It gives those of us with specialized skills or interests a way to communicate with our colleagues without wasting words. But rely too much on jargon, and you risk alienating new visitors. For a niche blog, this may not seem as important, since part of the reason you’re using jargon is to establish yourself as an authority on your topic. But even for niche blogs, cluttering your writing with too much jargon can lead to bad wordsmithing.

What’s more, many bloggers adopt their own personal lexicon, using made-up terms and fun neologisms as a way of entertaining faithful readers. But again, if you’re using these too much, you risk turning off new readers who may not feel like a part of the club.

Starbucks’ rigid attention to its own lexicon may have seemed clever when the marketeers first thought of it (even though “grande” really does seem like it should mean “large” instead of “medium”). But in the end, I think it’s become something of a liability. By itself it won’t drive customers away, but it does run the risk of making their experience at Starbucks a bad one. I know the eight or ten people standing there in line with me had a pretty lousy time. And I’m finishing up writing this very piece at a different coffeeshop — one where the sizes are small, medium and large.

Similarly, using lots of jargon and in-jokes won’t drive people away from your site — particularly if your writing and commentary are good enough to make readers want to find out what all those little jokes actually mean. But your word choices are part of a greater whole. And if the other parts can’t hold together, your readers may decide to get their coffee somewhere else.

*My other message to Starbucks, in the form of a rhetorical question: If the guy behind the counter is just going to shout out my drink order, why did the woman at the register write my name on the cup? Huh?