Writing aims to take an idea floating around your skull and transform it into a string of words. If you do it well, people will understand what you’re trying to say.
Communication is hard. Two people reading the same message often come away with different views on what it means.
What I see smart people often getting wrong about effective writing is ignoring the power of simplicity. Simple writing works. It’s not glamorous or ego-fulfilling like a complex string of subordinate clauses and an esoteric vocabulary, but it’s hard to argue with results.
For example, this study found that people were more likely to invest in stocks when the company names were easy to pronounce, suggesting that processing fluency (i.e., how easily information is processed) plays a role in decision-making. This concept extends to other areas of communication, including writing, where simple language can increase processing fluency and, ultimately, the persuasiveness of a message.
But it’s hard to break old habits. For many, writing in flowery academic prose is a hallmark of intellectualism, a chance to show off mental might. If you’re not bringing the reader along, are you doing your job?
Here are three ways that using simple language will improve your writing immediately:
Simple Writing is Clear
“Good prose should be transparent – like a window pane.”
When you embrace simple writing, you leave behind unnecessary abstractions and cut straight to the heart of the matter. The more lost we feel as communicators, the greater the urge to rely on vague metaphors and tired expressions. An effective exercise to improve clarity in your writing is to ask yourself, “what am I trying to say?”
The answer is often much more straightforward than what you’ve been writing. What’s stopping you is the feeling that your writing should be more complex. It shouldn’t.
Simple Writing is Accessible
“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.”
As a digital nomad, I spend much time conversing with people of wildly different fluencies in English (or in my embarrassingly unfluent Spanish). Daily, I’m confronted with the challenge of expressing myself as simply as possible but still getting my point across.
In the modern workplace, it’s common for teams to be distributed across the globe. Even in the office, not everyone you work with necessarily grew up speaking English at home. When you write simply, you cast a wide net.
This is even more important when you are writing for a narrow audience. Every conversion counts when you are micro-targeting, so don’t lose readers with complicated jargon or technical terms.
Putting it together
“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”
You may be an expert, and your product may be highly sophisticated, but I guarantee there IS a way to express its value in simple terms. A shorter, more precise, more impactful way to strip it down to its essential parts. Did I already mention this is hard?
The greatest communicators to ever live only achieved brevity and simplicity with great effort. The struggle is an expected part of the process. If you’re tired of struggling, you can always contact an expert 
.
