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Posted on 11/01/2005 9:10:26 AM PST by CarrotAndStick
Though copy editors and popular writers have known it for long, an experiment by a psychologist establishes the key to impressive writing - keep it plain and simple.
Writers who use long words needlessly and choose complicated font styles in print are seen as less intelligent than those who employ basic vocabulary and plain text, according to new research from the Princeton University in New Jersey to be published in the next edition of Applied Cognitive Psychology.
In the study titled 'Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly', Daniel Oppenheimer based his findings on students' responses to writing samples for which the complexity of the font or vocabulary was systematically manipulated.
In a series of five experiments, he found that people tended to rate the intelligence of authors who wrote essays in simpler language, using an easy to read font, as higher than those who authored more complex works.
"It's important to point out that this research is not about problems with using long words but about using long words needlessly," Oppenheimer was quoted as saying.
"Anything that makes a text hard to read and understand, such as unnecessarily long words or complicated fonts, will lower readers' evaluations of the text and its author."
The samples of text included graduate school applications, sociology dissertation abstracts, and translations of a work of Descartes. Times New Roman and italicized Juice font were used in samples to further assess the effect of fluency on rating levels.
Interestingly, by making people aware that the source of low fluency was irrelevant to judgement, Oppenheimer found that they overcompensated and became biased in the opposite direction.
In a final experiment, he provided samples of text printed with normal and low printer toner levels. The low toner levels made the text harder to read, but readers were able to identify the toner as being responsible for the difficulty, and therefore didn't blame the authors.
"One thing seems certain: write as simply and plainly as possible and it's more likely you'll be thought of as intelligent," Oppenheimer said.
Beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your communication possess coalescent consistency and concatentated cogency. Eschew all flatulent garrulity and asinine affectations. Use intelligibility and veracious vivacity without rodomontade or thrasonatical bombasity. Sedulously avoid all prolixity and psittaceous vacuity.
BTTT
Works for me.
What you said.
The title for this instruction on simple and clear writing is a HOOT!
Never use a big word when a diminutive one will suffice.
Orwell's Rules, By Which Xena Lives:
1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Unmoglich? Nicht moglich? Ain't gonna happen?
Cute :)
southernnorthcarolina would add that writing in the third person tends to be very annoying.
Also, how does an oxymoron differ from a hydromoron? A nitromoron? How are they similar? Are there organic as well as non-organic morons?
You win. I give up.
Great thread. Thanks for posting this article.
To the author's defense, I think it was tongue in cheek.
LOL! I must have missed that episode.
Feculence of equus caballus!
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