Hail, Hail to Shorter Words!

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When you speak to your other half over breakfast, you’re not going to ask them if they need to “utilize the vehicle” today. You’ll ask if they’re going to use the car.

You won’t tell the kids to stop “communicating simultaneously.” You’ll say, please stop talking over each other.

And when you’re making a pizza together later, you won’t ask what “composition of ingredients” everyone wants. You’ll just say, what mix of toppings

We naturally speak in an unpretentious way. So why do we gum up our professional writing with phrases we would trip over in a conversation?

A simple tip for better emails, articles and everything in between

People clearly prefer to read shorter words. They remember shorter words better after reading. And perhaps most importantly, they rate short-word-using authors as smarter and more capable.

Finance is already bogged down with big, plodding vocab. Allocations. Inflation. Performance. Estimates. There’s barely a topic that isn’t choking on three- and four-syllable words. These words are all punishing you on the Flesch Reading Ease score before you’ve even gotten started.

And then we all go and make it worse, trying to sound professional! Not too long ago, I wrote about the struggle to earn high readability scores in financial articles. We’re making each other do graduate-level reading, all day every day.

Short and sweet

Whenever you tackle edits this month – on anything from a text to a white paper – give big words the boot. Your readers will find you smarter and more capable immediately!