In two weeks, I'll celebrate my eighth anniversary writing this column. And if I do any ruminating during my 15-second celebration, I'll recognize that one thing still hasn't changed: there's still no single technical level of writing that makes everybody happy.

I still get complaints from total newbies, who are bewildered by terms like "smartphone" and "plasma TV." And I still get bashed by the gearheads, who find the column not nearly technical enough.

I think a lot about the technical level of the column. Over the years, I've adopted a number of tricks that are designed to communicate technical points without losing the novices--and one of them is avoiding jargon.

Why tech writers use so much jargon, I don't know. Maybe it's self-aggrandizement; they want to lord their knowledge over everybody else. Maybe it's laziness; they can't be bothered to fish for a plain-English word. Maybe it's just habit; they spend all day talking shop with other nerds, so they slip into technospeak when they write for larger audiences.