Tag Archives: clear thinking

Use the quality of your thinking to impress your readers, not the complexity of your language

Plain language / Plain English, Thinking & writing,

Big words and complex sentence structure can be used to generate the impression of being ‘educated’.

Some writers deliberately make text difficult to understand to create an air of mystique and to emphasis the distance between their intelligence and that of the reader. This pretence gets in the way of communication.

“The source of bad writing is the desire to be more than a person of sense – to be thought a genius. If people would only say what they have to say in plain terms, how much more eloquent they would be.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Often obscure, foggy writing is a consequence of obscure, foggy thinking. The subject is not as well understood as the writer pretends, so they bombard us with words that hide meaning. Readers need to work hard to unpack the ideas. When you write in plain language your thinking is held up clearly for all to see.

It’s important to resist the temptation to impress with your language. Using plain expressions will mean more readers will understand, and readers who can handle complex language will not be disadvantaged in any way.

Sure there are times when specialist language and jargon is appropriate, but most of the time using speech patterns and the plain words of every day conversation is the most effective way to get your message across.

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Impress with your thinking, not your language

Plain language / Plain English, Thinking & writing, writing tip,

Some writers deliberately write in a way that makes their text difficult to read.

They do this to create an air of mystique or superiority or to appear more ‘educated’ than their readers. They emphasise the supposed distance between their intelligence and that of the reader by using words that their readers may not know and putting it altogether in long and complex sentences.

This is a pretence! It always gets in the way of good, effective communication.

If you feel you need to impress you readers in some way, do it with the power and clarity of your thinking, not by showing off with your language or vocabulary skills.

And sometimes, difficult writing is simply a cover-up for a lack of clear and insightful thinking. Some writers use complex writing in an attempt to sound profound when they are not really saying anything worthwhile at all.

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