What's That, You Say?
Posted by Sandy Fitzgerald on Tue, Aug 25, 2009
A long time ago, when I was beginning my career as a writer, I thought I had to bombard others with my knowledge. My stories opened with sentences that were no shorter than 75 words long. In those 75 words, I crammed in adjectives, descriptive verbs, and the biggest words my brain could come up with.
Yes, I thought I was a great writer and I was going far with my words. And I was arrogant. If readers can't understand it, I thought, tough. They're just stupid.
Wrong.
It took a grouchy editor to finally pound the truth into my head by yelling it at me across a crowded newsroom.
"Why in the hell would anyone want to read this, Fitz?"
Then I got it. If you're not writing copy that people can understand, then you're just serving your own ego. And guess what? Your ego isn't going to go out and buy a new computer, or drive a new car, or Google the cheapest price on plane tickets.
The biggest enemy of clear copy that will draw in readers is the "10-cent word." We all know those words. It's the use of "canine" instead of dog. "Equine" instead of horse. "Interjected" instead of said.
Who are you trying to impress, anyway? Yourself? Or that customer out there who has a few bucks he'd like to spend, and who is looking for a place to spend it?
There's an old saying that if a tree falls in the woods, and it doesn't make a sound, can you tell it fell?
The same thing goes for clean writing. If your words are out there, and nobody is understanding them, did you write anything at all?