“Can we meet? ” and “Can we talk?” imply action, and that’s what everyone wants. A simple “let’s talk” is great, too-confident, to the point, and assuming a positive response. This request also conveys a problem that needs resolving-the foundation of any productive meeting. I was a little confused after that meeting. Replace the jargon with more direct and concrete wording, such as: First, stop using touch base and touch base offline. What can I do if I can’t touch base offline? So stay in the real world and ask someone to talk. Everyone else talks, and that happens in real life.
#TOUCH BASE MEANING OFFLINE#
The truth is, touch base offline just doesn’t make sense for a regular person to use. Molly’s use of jargon actually adds more questions and confusion to the existing concerns, and it likely leaves Bradley feeling confused and unclear about what to do next.
A problem thus arises: when is she going to revisit this? Where and how? Which parts, specifically? And whose responsibility is it to set up the meeting? But then she makes an unspecific promise to address his budget and timeline concerns. Whoever is addressing Bradley-we’ll call her Molly-acknowledges that he made a valuable comment. But let us break down what’s happening here. Worth discussing those budget and timeline concerns. It’s a great way of announcing intent and sounding responsive, without planting any tangible flag in the ground for when you’ll revisit an issue. Touch base offline is a frustrating phrase because people rarely follow through when they ask to touch base offline. So we can see the literal interpretations of touch base and offline coming together: to form a safe, private space to communicate and strategize. How the compound phrase is most commonly used in business conversations today, however, proves troublesome. We can’t similarly pinpoint exactly when ‘offline’ was first attached to touch base, but we can trace its colloquial use back to Eric Raymond, who defined ‘offline’ in his 1996 New Hacker’s Dictionaryas “Not now or not here…Specifically used to suggest that a discussion be moved off a public newsgroup to email.” That makes sense: private forums are better-suited for private conversations away from a larger group. The modern use of touch base references this scenario: at times, people need to communicate and strategize from a safe space. From that position, he can safely communicate with his teammates-coaches, other runners, the batter in the box-and strategize his next move. It’s the action of a runner standing on a base.
To touch base offline simply means to discuss at a later date. That’s right: we’re going to touch base offline. Today, we tackle a maddeningly soft, overly digital way of asking for a real-world human conversation. ‘Leverage’ and ‘push the envelope,’ sealed forever in the Jargon Jar In our past two installments, we discarded leverage and pushed the enveloperight into our trusty Mason jar, screwing the lid shut on two overused, unnecessarily complex and indirect twists of phrase.
#TOUCH BASE MEANING SERIES#
Welcome back to the Jargon Jar! If you’re here for the first time, make sure to read our introductory Jargon Jar post, which explains why this series of posts exists, and why you’re never going to touch base offline again.
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