Submitted by crinadmin on
With much of world's economy revolving around businesses, it's no wonder that business jargon has strayed over into other sectors such as nursing, education and even human rights. 'Best practice' is one such example. Best practices generally refer to the easiest and most effective ways of achieving an objective, based on evidence and research. For instance, “It is best practice to monitor the well-being of children in foster care.” However, on the same basis that we wouldn’t expect a child to understand business jargon, NGOs shouldn’t use it in their child-friendly documents as it is not child-friendly language. Specifically, it’s the “practice” component that can confuse readers. This is especially the case when the term is repeated in the same sentence. For example, “Experts came up with various best practices, which later formed a list of best practice statements.” In order to avoid using the term, you may need to be more creative in your wording by interchanging between adjectives or superlatives. For instance, instead of saying “it’s best practice to share research between NGOs”, try “it’s best to / it’s advisable to / it’s better to share research between NGOs.” Remember: the simpler the language, the easier it is to understand.