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Have you ever deliberately replaced small words with bigger ones in order to sound more intelligent? Guess what – it usually doesn’t work. In a series of studies Daniel Oppenheimer showed that writers actually came across as less intelligent when they used big words where smaller ones would have worked just as well. The bottom line: take the time to understand what you want to say and then say it in plain, ordinary language.
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough – Albert Einstein
…the first step towards clarity is writing simply. – Daryl Bem
Resource for this Episode
- Oppenheimer, D. (2006). Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective
of necessity: Problems with using long words needlessly. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 20, 139-156. - Write simply: The lessons of Ernest Hemingway from The Writer’s Pulse blog.
- Dr. Oppenheimer has a web page for his Oppenheimer Lab where you’ll find lots of other interesting papers.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Michael: The author’s website indicates that this paper is a 2006 Ignoble Prize winner (mentioned on TIPs). Also SSCI indicates 13 citations of this article; however, most are by the author in subsequent works (nice evidence of self citation).
I didn’t know this Blaine. Where can I find out about this ignoble prize (I’ll Google it).
I found the link: http://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2006
Very interesting. The prize is given, “For achievements that first make people LAUGH
then make them THINK”. Thanks Blaine
I think you’ve missed the whole point of writing complexly. Obviously it’s better to write clearly & simply when you have a distinct point to make and solid evidence to support it.
But surely you’ve been in the situation of having to fill up a number of pages on a topic that you think is stupid and have little or nothing to say about. Complex writing obscures the lack of content in your writing while also filling up space. See the Sokal hoax for an example which contradicts the study featured in the podcast.
While listening to the podcast, I thought about the relevance of the Sokal hoax (http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/ ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair ) as well; however, the Sokal paper and controversy is more than an issue of complex writing. Also, the ending of the podcast said something to the effect that writing for professionals required complexity to be accepted as legitimate to peers.
Just listening now to the podcast… Just wondering if there is something else in play when the evaluators judge whether or not to accept an applicant… Specially if it’s in literature, perhaps the more pedantic or complex sentences represent a threat to the evaluators (competition), or that their difficulty in understanding the sentences makes them feel somewhat less intelligent, therefore less likely to accept the applicant?
Regarding the weird font, I’d personally reject the applicant just because it’s a voluntary choice of a hard-to-read font, and looks goofy. It’s like showing up at the interview in a clown suit.