How to write so you sound every bit as smart as you are

I recently handled a project for an organization full of extraordinarily smart people, something you might not recognize if you read the copy they wrote. Their words were so unfamiliar, their sentence structure so complex only their peers could grasp what they tried to convey … and their peers weren’t the audience. You were.

No, I’m not insulting them. In fact, their academic and professional backgrounds are truly remarkable, and their work may have a transformative impact upon their field of expertise. But when asked to explain the nature of their work to the outside world, they drafted thick, incomprehensible dissertations.

My task? Transform those drafts into something mere mortals like you and me could not only understand, but also find relevant and useful. So how exactly can a writer who hasn’t even dipped a toe into a graduate seminar (or a writing class, for that matter) make such highly credentialed professionals look smarter? Simple. No, really … simple.

I slashed my way through the thick jungle of layered and twisted clauses, seeking the message each paragraph sought to impart. Then I rewrote each paragraph to communicate those points in simple, everyday language. A dense five-sentence paragraph became a single sentence: “We then obtained a grant to study a larger sample size.” You understood that sentence immediately, but I promise you’d still be trying to grasp what the original conveyed.

When my contact spelled out the challenge and asked how I might approach it, my reply was just as simple: I’ll make your authors sound every bit as smart as they are.

If you want to be seen as smart and knowledgeable, you have to make sure your audience understands exactly what you’re trying to convey. Most often, the best way to do that is by using familiar words and simple language.

That may surprise you, especially if you received good grades in your high school English or freshman Composition classes. While there, you were instructed to write in ways that were anything but simple. Instead of sharing straightforward messages, you probably tried to make yourself appear to be more intelligent by choosing multisyllabic words and stringing them together in complex sentences with semicolons bridging paragraph-length clauses.

That kind of writing impressed your professors, so you were convinced it made you appear to be brilliant. But here’s something funny: when audiences find your words incomprehensible, they never think of you as smart. How can they when they have no idea what you’re trying to say?

So you know what happens? They don’t read what you’ve written because it hurts their brain. And that means they can’t gain the information, knowledge, and even wisdom you had hoped to share.

Your teachers and professors taught you the academic style of writing: the formal, stuffy amalgam of long introductions, expository paragraphs, and conclusions summarizing everything you previously explained, peppered with five-syllable words cribbed from the thesaurus, allowing you to stretch two pages of information into an eight-page term paper.

Now, they didn’t intend to lead you astray. When they told you that style was the correct way to write, they failed to add that’s true only in academia. Outside of the classroom, lecture hall, and research lab, there’s no reason to write that way. When it comes to communicating with customers, prospects, and other stakeholders, the most effective approach is built upon basic, widely understood words and short, simple sentences.

In fact, the best way to write when you’re not aiming for a grade is to share your message in the simplest terms possible. If you believe a plant manager will save money by switching to your lubricants, write “Because our lubricants don’t break down as quickly, you’ll save money.” You don’t need to add five-syllable words and semicolons. Just imagine what you’d say to your intended audience if they were sitting across the table from you at lunch and write that down.

Copy that’s conversational connects with people. Long before we discovered how to read, we listened to our parents and other people around us. That’s how we learned how to share our needs and wants with those folks and respond to theirs. When we meet a complete stranger, conversation allows us to bridge the gap. If the guy in the next airplane seat starts talking to you in the same language you used in that paper you wrote for Poli Sci 101, you’re probably going to smile politely and quickly insert your earbuds.

Don’t make the common mistake of trying to impress someone by astonishing them with your superior intellect. If you really want to impress people with what you know, share it in a way they understand, using language that’s familiar to them. That’s what will really make you look smart.