Why Simple Words Work
The best writing advice I’ve ever gotten was to keep it as simple as possible. That’s great advice if your goal is to communicate with others. I don’t claim to be a writer, but I try to follow good advice.
Some people have different goals. They might be trying to show how smart or educated they are. They might think that convincing you of their argument depends on you believing they are smart. They might be right. Or they might like the feeling of superiority it gives them. They are just putting on verbal airs.
Others might be trying to destroy or prevent your proper understanding of a topic. Generally, this will require a lot of complicated logic, insinuations, and tricky questions. Lies are generally complicated. The truth is simple.
Simple words work because they accomplish my goal: to communicate. Do I want to convince people of anything? Yes. And if they can understand it, then they can be truly convinced, rather than snowed.
I use my fair share of highfalutin language. As a friend recently pointed out, English is great because it has so many different, nuanced ways to say things. Sometimes when you write about something complicated, the language must get complicated. But even then, my goal is to use simple words. They work.
P.S. The simplest words in English often come to us from Old English (ie Anglo-Saxon). I have a little Mac-only tool I developed (with the help of AI, because I’m a lazy programmer) that allows you to select text and find out what percentage of the words are from Old English. If you’re interested, you can find it here.