Communication research classifies jargon into two categories: well-used jargon and badly-used jargon ( Hirst, 2003 ). 3 Jargon is well used when it is well adapted to its audience and necessary to achieve the goal of efficient and precise communication. In contrast, jargon is badly used when it is ill-adapted to its audience or whenever jargon is excessive or unnecessary( Hirst, 2003 ). Following this argument, we identify two factors that could affect investors’ perceptions of jargon and their subsequent investment decisions: (1) jargon type, which relates to whether the jargon used in management disclosures is necessary (hereafter, good jargon) or unnecessary (hereafter, bad jargon); and (2) investors’ industry knowledge, which determines whether the use of jargon in management disclosures is well- or ill-adapted to its audience. We classify investors’ industry knowledge into three levels: no industry knowledge, some-but-low industry knowledge, and high industry knowledge, and consider investors to be those with higher industry knowledge if they have accumulated knowledge in an industry via more education experience or more related working experience.