Keep It Short, Keep It Sharp: Why less is more

Since Jan, I have been on a quest: make things clear. My job deals with big words. Words that sound smart but block the point. So I made it my task to cut the fluff and speak straight.

Each week, I take text full of long words and odd terms, and I break it down. I chop it up. I turn it into stuff folks get. No buzz. No spin. Just the truth. It’s been a wild ride. I’ve used clips that grow thoughts from small to big, and big to small. I’ve asked AI tools to talk like they would to a teen. And what do you know? They did.

Here’s the thing: less is more. More work? For sure. But I’ve gained more than I’ve lost. More reach. More depth. More “Aha!” from folks who now get what we mean. When we speak plain, we drop the mask. We stop the show. We let truth shine.

Words shape how we think. Long words feel smart. Sharp words feel true. Our brains love style more than sense at times. This is called bias. When folks use grand words, we think they must know more. But most times, they just know more words. Not more truth.

This is why plain talk wins. It skips the trap. It brings the point home. If you want trust, start with terms all can grasp. If you want folks to act, make sure they first get it.

A prof once told me a tale. He spoke at a big event. Five folks were on the stage. When it was done, a woman came up to him. She said, “Out of all of you, I got you. You were the one I could track.” He felt proud. To reach her meant a lot. She was not part of the crowd that reads books for fun. She came from a rough spot in life. But she had made the time to show up, to learn. And he had made the time to speak to her, not past her.

But then she said, “It must not have been that big of a deal, if I got it.” And that hit hard.

That’s the twist. We have been taught that big words mean big thoughts. That if you want to sound smart, you must not sound clear. We need to fix that. Smart should not mean “hard to get.” It should mean “hard to miss.”

This whole post was made with just one-syllable words. Why? To prove that we don’t need much to say a lot. Now, read this:

Linguistic Economy and the Amplification of Discourse

Since January, I have embarked on a deliberate and sustained process of strategic content simplification—an exercise in deconstructing jargon-laden institutional communications and reconstituting them into clear, digestible, and cognitively accessible messaging. This has been, quite frankly, revelatory. A disciplined journey through layers of linguistic obfuscation toward semantic precision and human resonance.

In the process, I’ve explored several heuristic tools—among them, pedagogical video essays that scaffold ideas from rudimentary premises to complex constructs and vice versa. I have also deployed generative AI platforms, instructing them to parse and reframe dense content for audiences with varying cognitive baselines, including hypothetical adolescents. The outcomes? Enlightening. And often counterintuitive. The less ornate the message, the more profound the uptake.

This, of course, is grounded in cognitive science. Neurolinguistic programming and psycholinguistics suggest that clarity is not merely stylistic—it is biological. The brain favors fluency. When language is processed with ease, we misattribute that ease to truth, value, or intelligence. It’s a cognitive bias known as processing fluency, and it plays a powerful role in persuasion and recall. Simplification is not a dilution of ideas. It is a recalibration of transmission vectors for maximal engagement.

Yet, complexity bias is pervasive—particularly in academia, policymaking, and elite discourse communities. There’s an entrenched belief that elevated syntax and specialized vocabulary are hallmarks of intellectual authority. But often, they serve only to gatekeep comprehension and alienate the very populations we purport to serve.

A professor once shared an anecdote with me that captures this tension poignantly. After delivering a lecture on a panel with four other academics, a woman approached him—someone, by his estimation, from a lower socioeconomic background. She said: “Of all five, I only understood you.” He felt a deep sense of pride. That his language had bridged a divide. That his message had landed.

But then she added: “It must not have been that important—because even I understood you.”

That moment, he told me, was both humbling and disheartening. It laid bare the internalized hierarchy we assign to comprehension. The assumption that for something to be intellectually valid, it must also be hard to grasp. This is the tyranny of abstraction—a linguistic elitism that persists even among those most disenfranchised by it.

The solution lies in intentional rhetorical accessibility. In using language not to signal superiority, but to extend an invitation. Because in an age defined by fleeting attention spans, virality, and algorithmic gatekeepers, amplification hinges not on how “smart” we sound—but on how heard we are.

This essay is a mirror to the one I wrote entirely in monosyllables. That version stripped language to its skeletal form. This one, adorned in full regalia, illustrates the exact inverse: the same truths dressed in different robes. The core idea remains—if we want reach, we must rethink speech.