Jargon

The use of jargon can be very off-putting for someone who isn't in the know. Sometimes it seems that it's used just to keep people at a distance, those who aren't in the 'club' as it were. Scientists are very strong on jargon, though I suspect it's often because they forget that while they understand the stuff, many people don't. Hence the frequent confusion that arises when scientists present something in a paper and a media person tries to interpret it. 'Research studies show....' pronounces the media person, and proceeds to present an entirely garbled version of what the studies actually did show.

All this by way of a long introduction to seeing a website in which I barely understood what was being offered at all. I came to it via this link 'sell merchant account' and when I checked the page out was greeted with the following piece of in-house jargon: .... pays 30% of ongoing recurring revenue from all sources of income from credit and debit card processing, and Authorize.Net gateway fees, including revenue from chargebacks, returns and monthly fees! This is the most rewarding reseller program available.

I've read this a few times now, and obviously it means something, but for the life of me I'm not sure what. The next paragraph isn't much help: ...has the flexibility to offer both "Interchange-Plus" pricing for your established high margin merchants, and "Two Tier Billing" for your new clients, thereby increasing retention and profitability. Strengthen your relationships with your clients with our outstanding customer support.

Plainly I need to check Wikipedia out to discover what 'chargebacks', 'gateway fees', 'interchange-plus' and the like all mean. Because there's so much jargon in these paragraphs, there's nothing left to allow you to figure out the meaning unaided.

As a child I would skip over words I didn't understand, because frequently you'd get the general drift if you kept reading. Consequently there are still some words that mean nothing to me: pejorative is one particular example. Even though it was explained to me recently, in context, it still hasn't stuck! I'm going to have to make some real effort with it, obviously.