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It wasn’t until we had a business writing consultant come in to train us about how to write at the level of a Year 8 student that we realised the folly of our ways.

Using my newly found skills of writing a report using simple English, I proudly produced my ‘easy on the brain’ report to my manager (who missed the writing class). He told me ‘You write like you talk’. To this day, I still don’t know if he was criticising my talking or writing ability, but I gathered either way he wasn’t happy.

However, from a communication point of view, this style of writing is perfect for getting your message across quickly.

Later on in my career, I worked at a company that prided itself on its easy to read reports. While this was true (to some degree), one of the directors loved to throw in a difficult word in every report he wrote to make the marketing manager reach for his dictionary. He thought this was really clever and that his clients would be in awe of his knowledge. I’m guessing his clients thought he was a tosser (interestingly, I met an ex-client years later who told me that when their company received one of his reports they would quickly scan it to find the unusual word and then erupt into hysterical laughter).

Articles that are written to impress your audience about how clever you are, do nothing more than distance them. No matter how learned your market is, they still prefer to read information that is easy to digest.