Early in my career at a London broadsheet, I tried to impress my Editor-in-Chief by using the word interlocutor in a headline. He printed the draft, circled the word in thick black marker, and wrote: “Do you want people to read this, or do you want them to buy a dictionary?”
It was a humbling lesson. True expertise isn’t the ability to make simple things sound complex; it’s the ability to make complex things feel simple.
1. The “Fifth-Grade” Philosophy
There’s a common misconception that writing simply means “dumbing it down.” It’s actually the opposite. It takes a profound understanding of a subject to explain it in plain English. If you can’t explain your business model or your project’s goal to a ten-year-old, you probably don’t understand it well enough yourself.
The Editorial Test: Remove the jargon. If your argument falls apart without the “buzzwords,” your argument was never there to begin with.
2. Jargon is a Hiding Place
In the media world, we see “corporate-speak” as a red flag. When a CEO says they are “leveraging synergies to pivot toward a holistic ecosystem,” they are usually trying to hide the fact that they’re laying people off or losing money. Clear language is honest language. When you speak plainly, you build trust. People don’t follow leaders they can’t understand.
3. The “One Idea” Rule
The biggest enemy of clarity is the “And.”
“Our product is fast and cheap and easy to use and eco-friendly.” By trying to say everything, you say nothing. A great front-page headline has one job: to communicate one singular, powerful idea.
The Action: Before you hit “send” on that important email, ask yourself: What is the one thing I want them to remember? Delete everything else that dilutes that point.
4. Respect the “Cognitive Load”
Your reader has a limited amount of mental energy. Every time they have to stop to look up a word or re-read a tangled sentence, you are “taxing” their brain. Eventually, they’ll just stop paying the tax and close the tab. Writing simply is an act of empathy. It’s a way of saying, “I value your time more than my ego.”
