Introduction
Technology is a big part of many workplaces. Pippa and Phil talk about remote working has impacted language at work. Learn some jargon phrases for the modern office.
Vocabulary
take this offline
talk about this after the meeting
ping
the sound of a notification, or, to send someone a message
hot-desking
a way of organising the office, where nobody has their own desk
co-working
working in an office with people from other companies
digital nomad
somebody who travels and works remotely from all over the world
reach out
contact someone
going forward
in the future
loop someone in
add somebody to an email thread or conversation
Transcript
Note: This is a transcript of a spoken conversation and is not a word-for-word script.
Pippa
Hello and welcome to Learning English for Work and our special series all about workplace jargon. I’m Pippa.
Phil
And I’m Phil. Today, we’re talking about technology at work and all the jargon that comes with it. You can find a transcript for this episode to read along on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.
Pippa
So, technology, it’s increasingly a part of our lives at work and it comes with quite a lot of jargon, right, Phil?
Phil
Yes, it does. I suppose new things need new words to describe them. We said something like this in the jargon about ideas episode, didn’t we?
Pippa
Yeah and office workers in particular may have seen new jargon develop since remote working or hybrid working has become more popular or more widespread in those kinds of jobs.
Phil
And of course, now that more work is online, we actually use a lot more online jargon at work as well.
OK, Let’s look at some common jargon around the technology that we use at work.
Pippa
So, the first phrase we have is take this offline. Have you heard anyone use this, Phil, saying let’s take this offline?
Phil
Yes, particularly in like a virtual meeting or something, just to stop talking about a particular thing and save it for after the call, perhaps in person. I’ve also possibly heard this in a real live meeting now. Just to say, let’s talk about this after the meeting.
Pippa
Yeah, so if someone says let’s take this offline, they mean, let’s not have this discussion – usually in the virtual meeting but yeah sometimes in a… in an in-person meeting – let’s kind of leave it for afterwards.
The next one we have, Phil, is ping. So, what’s a ping? Why would we ping someone at work?
Phil
OK well a ping is when your phone goes ping. And that’s usually because you’ve got a notification. And that’s usually because someone’s sent you a message. And we can actually use that as a verb or at least some people do now to mean ‘send someone a message’. You ping someone, you send someone an instant message or maybe even an email.
Pippa
Yeah, it’s about, kind of, getting their attention, giving them a notification. Or you might say to somebody at work, ‘I’ll ping you about that later’. And so, you mean you’re going to send them something about it, and they’ll get a ping on their phone or on their computer.
Phil
Of course talking about writing messages or sending messages, the next one we’ve got is to do with perhaps sending someone an email, maybe something longer. We could say you can drop someone a line.
Pippa
Yes, so this usually means writing an email. But I think maybe it stretches back a little bit further. So if you were writing a letter, you might have dropped someone a line. It means you’re going to write to them. You’re going to write something for them.
And I think maybe we use a lot of these phrases about contacting people at work today a lot because we need reminders on our laptops and things about what we’re doing. We’ve got a lot of different work going on, people are working at different times. So usually like the core stuff is in your email inbox, I find. And so, if someone’s dropped me a line. I’ll remember to follow that up.
Phil
I think you need to tell me the next one, Pippa. What’s hot-desking?
Pippa
So, hot-desking is kind of a way to organise work. So, now that many workers have laptops and can work anywhere, they don’t need to have their own desk or their own seat and they can kind of plug in and work wherever.
And so we have this idea of hot-desking it means you kind of turn up, you find a seat and you hot-desk, you work from that place in the office. And so it’s a little bit more free and flexible.
Phil
Do you ever find that you don’t actually hot-desk? You just sit in the same place anyway.
Pippa
Yes, I mean that’s often how it works in our team. We have our preferred places to hot-desk, we have our preferred places to sit, but yeah, it’s a lot… it’s a lot more common now that people kind of work in lots of different places.
We also have a similar word, co-working. And this is where you work in an office with people from other companies. Or maybe you work on your own, but you like to go into an office. So you go to a co-working place to co-work with people.
Phil
Another one that’s perhaps similar, but if you describe someone as a digital nomad, that’s someone who can work anywhere and they kind of take advantage of that, they work anywhere in the world. Maybe they go somewhere really interesting for a couple of months, and they work from that place, they’re a digital nomad. Because… because a lot of work is online, you can go wherever you want to do, and you can work from wherever.
Pippa
I wouldn’t mind being a digital nomad. That sounds quite fun. I could send you emails from the beach, Phil.
Phil
I’d be so jealous.
Pippa
Are there any strange words or phrases that you don’t understand at work. Email us at learning.english@bbc.co.uk and we could talk about the jargon that you suggest in a future episode.
Phil
Now, a big technological part of work is sending emails.
Pippa
Yes, and in our series Office English, we talked about how to write a good email. But emails are also places where we can end up using a lot of jargon or cliches, Phil.
Phil
Yes. BBC World Service listeners have been telling us on Facebook about the jargon they hear at work that annoys them.
So, here are a few examples. And I think I’ll start off with a very popular one, reach out. You might email to say I’m just reaching out about something. It means I’m contacting you about it. So many people mentioned this.
Pippa
Yeah, I’m guilty of using this one. I would say, I’m just reaching out or I might tell somebody in a meeting, maybe just reach out to so-and-so about that. So yeah, I’m guilty of one of the more annoying phrases, reach out.
Here’s another one that you might use in emails about a change: going forward. So, if you say going forward you mean in the future and lots of listeners said they found this annoying as well.
Phil
Yeah, I hate this one. I don’t know why, but I just hate going forward.
Pippa
You’d like to go backwards, instead?
Phil
Yes much better. No, it’s just the… just say ‘in the future’, ‘tomorrow’, ‘next year’.
Pippa
Yeah.
Phil
It’s too vague, that’s why I don’t like it.
Pippa
OK, and the final one that is used in emails a lot and people found annoying was looping in. So, if you loop someone into an email it means you add them to the email thread. Sometimes people might say ‘I’m just looping in Phil for visibility’. How do you feel about that one, Phil?
Phil
Yeah, that’s another one for the hate pile. You’d never speak to that with your friends, would you, on a group chat? ‘I’m just looping you in for visibility’.
Pippa
Maybe I might, but maybe that’s my own problem.
Of course, whilst people complain about these phrases, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we shouldn’t use them. So you shouldn’t feel bad if you’re using them. Maybe just try and see what people are doing in your workplace and kind of match the kind of language that people are using in their emails.
Phil
Because, as we’ve mentioned before, a lot of these phrases have come up because there’s things that people need to say and they need to find ways to say them. So, yeah, they are often very common in workplaces, and often for a reason.
Pippa
I guess the most important thing is that people understand you and you understand other people. So, as long as your phrase is clear, then it doesn’t matter too much.
Phil
Next time, we’re going to look in more detail at some of the opinions about business jargon, why we use it and whether it’s useful at work.
Pippa
But that’s it for this episode of Learning English for Work. Find more programmes to help you with your business English on our website, like our series Office English where we talked about how to write an email. Visit bbclearningenglish.com.
Phil
Thanks for listening.
Pippa
Bye.