Quick test: can you explain what "carbon offset" actually means, in one sentence, without looking it up? I couldn't, not until last year, and by then I'd worked close to the sustainability sector for years, where the word came up constantly.
Not because I wasn't paying attention. Nobody ever explained it. It was just used, over and over, as if everyone already knew.
Turns out, most people don't. Only 11 percent of the public can correctly explain what carbon offsetting actually means, according to a UK survey covered by Sustainable Brands. The same survey found that only 59 percent could correctly identify what "net-zero" means, even though it's one of the most repeated phrases in climate communication today.
Carbon Offset and Net-Zero: Words Nobody Stopped to Explain
Carbon offset isn't a difficult concept. Neither is "SDGs" (the UN's 17 development goals) or "greenwashing" (a claim that sounds sustainable but isn't backed by real action). These aren't specialist terms like a legal clause or a medical diagnosis. They're words about things that affect ordinary decisions: what people buy, which policies they support, which causes they trust enough to give money to.
The SDGs show the same gap in a slightly different shape. Globally, 74 percent of people have at least heard of the SDGs, but only 26 percent say they're actually familiar enough to explain them, according to a World Economic Forum survey of nearly 20,000 people across 28 countries. Hearing a term and understanding it are two different things, and most of the public only ever gets the first one.
But the people who use these words the most, people working in sustainability, companies, funders, learn them from each other. From conferences, from reports written for each other, from funder templates. Nobody along that chain has much reason to stop and ask whether the words actually land once they reach the public.
Why this is the same problem, one level earlier
I've written before about how insider language shuts people out, even people working in adjacent fields. This is the more basic version of that problem. It's not organisational jargon specific to one NGO. It's the core vocabulary of an entire sector, assumed as common knowledge when it very much isn't.
The cost isn't abstract. Someone who might genuinely care, a small donor, a person affected by a policy, someone deciding what to buy, runs into the words before they get to the point. If the words feel like they're not meant for them, most people conclude the topic isn't for them either. An issue that should belong to everyone ends up held by the small group who already speak its language.
Why this matters for how I write
This is why fixing text isn't just about technical SEO. Getting traffic from Google or AI is pointless if visitors land on your site and can't actually understand what you're saying. Canonical tags and meta tags matter, sure, but they don't help much if your copy assumes everyone is already an insider
If you're not sure whether your own site assumes too much prior knowledge, I offer a free 30-minute look at your site.
You'll walk away with one concrete finding either way, whether or not we end up working together. Get in touch or book a call, or see the full NGO service page for more anonymised examples.