Plain or Sophisticated?

There's something relaxing and motivating about sitting in cafés and writing. They're one of my favourite places to write. The only prerequisite is a comfy table, good coffee and quality sandwiches. Whether what I write is legible, decent or crap is irrelevant. The most important thing is that I manage to put words on paper. I can worry about coherence later.

In one of today's TEFL lessons my students and I discussed the issue of communication. For writers communication is very important. That's what we do. Our purpose is to communicate information across to our reader in the most comprehensible way while trying to avoid jargon and verbose prose. Instead we want brevity that will transfer all the information necessary as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Should we use plain or sophisticated language?

I found there's a mixed argument when it comes to deciding on an answer. It all depends on your audience. Are you going to communicate with doctors, lawyers, and business professionals? Or students, housewives and the general public? If you have a look at most consumer magazines, they are written in plain language that a primary school student is likely to understand. Trade magazines on the other hand use more technical terminology. Once you're clear on that you can safely decide whether throw in a bit of sophisticated jargon or stick to the plain, intelligible stuff. My language use is usually very plain. I talk to people who sometimes try to throw in fancy words to sound intelligent but unless it serves a larger purpose it downright sounds silly. Personally, I don't see the point in using terminology that makes you sound smart but no one understands.

So the conclusion I've come to is;

- avoid rambling
- limit the use of jargon because it's likely you won't be understood
- use brevity to get your point across effectively
- verbose prose with technical terminology will not necessarily make you sound more intelligent
- effective communication is important whether you're speaking or writing
- in the end do what feels most comfortable for you

For me this shows that I need to be more aware of my audience, and keep jargon, buzzwords and slang to a minimum. Yes, sometimes it's nice to use fancy words, just make sure they work with your topic and its purpose. In the end, which you choose to use will depend on what you're writing, who you're writing for, and your personal writing style.