Easy-to-process things feel truer, safer, and more appealing.
More quotesComplex words are useful when they preserve a distinction. They are pathetic when they merely protect the writer from sounding ordinary.
Doctors, engineers and statisticians need terms whose everyday substitutes would blur meaning. Keep those. Remove utilise when use is exact. Remove cross-functional optimisation when two teams are sharing a file.
Oppenheimer’s studies found that needless complexity reduced ratings of the writer’s intelligence. This feels deserved. The reader has been handed translation work so the author can signal effort, membership or importance.
Complex language also conceals missing decisions. “Optimise stakeholder outcomes” avoids naming the people who benefit, the people who lose and whoever chooses between them. The sentence sounds complete because the noun is impressive.
Use three questions during editing: what happened, who did it and what changes for the reader? “The implementation of enhanced functionality was undertaken” becomes “We added password recovery.” If the precise technical term belongs, the answers will show why.
The plain version may reveal that the product is modest. Good. A useful tool that helps two teams share a file has more dignity than a small tool wearing six syllables for height.
The final page goes to a technical user and a first-time buyer. Each underlines the words they cannot explain. The specialist term remains beside a definition. Three ornamental nouns are deleted. The file-sharing sentence stays exactly as it is.