Spot the real culprit

Get in touch

All our thoughts and advice on how to out what's actually getting in your way.

All our thoughts and advice in one place.

Start hereYour customers can’t hear the tune in your headTap a song on a table and almost nobody can name it. Your readers have the same problem with your content. Here’s why it happens and how to fix it.Stand out5 min
ViewingOur thinking
List view
Filter by culprit

Our advice 8

How to tell if your writing sounds like AINew
Four tics that give AI writing away and why they point to fuzzy thinking.
Attract5 min
Attract5 min28 Oct
Your contracts are confusing your customersNew
We’ve all stared at a legal contract, praying that the information will just osmose into your brain through your eyes. Sadly, that never happens.
Loyalty5 min
Loyalty5 min22 Oct
Your customers can’t hear the tune in your headNew
Tap a song on a table and almost nobody can name it. Your readers have the same problem with your content. Here’s why it happens and how to fix it.
Stand out5 min
Stand out5 min12 Oct
"Everyone does it" won't save you when the crackdown comesNew
In the 1890s, Clark Stanley was selling Snake Oil Liniment across America. According to the label, it could fix everything from toothache to frostbite.
Stand out7 min
Stand out7 min8 Oct
The five words making your customer service worse
If you’ve worked in customer experience, the phrase “the customer is always right” has definitely come up once or twice. It started as a way to win shoppers' trust. Now, it's mostly used to make staff put up with bad behaviour, which actually makes your customer service worse.
Loyalty4 min
Loyalty4 min30 Sept
No one gives a $#!+ about your opinion
Every review room has a Harry: the senior voice who says "I'm not sure about the purple" and calls it feedback. Here’s why that could cause you to keep making the same mistakes. Over and over and over. (And what you can say instead.)
Motivate6 min
Motivate6 min21 Sept
The one word to cut your complaints in half
Sorry. It’s the single most important word when it comes to your customer service.
Loyalty4 min
Loyalty4 min14 Jul
Why complex writing makes you look stupid
Ever thought complicated writing makes you sound smarter? Think again. This post shows how complex language, bad fonts, and even low printer toner can make you seem less intelligent.
Attract4 min
Attract4 min24 Jul

In the news 2

Seriously, know your audience: Bristol's AI mural disaster
Last week, the Jolly Colliers on West Street in Bedminster got a new mural. A big, bright vinyl one of Bristol, with hot air balloons, the Suspension Bridge, a Banksy, and the SS Great Britain. All made with AI. Within days, it was gone.
Loyalty6 min
Loyalty6 min25 Sept
Apple's 'lazy advert' highlights a much bigger problem with AI
You might’ve heard that Apple dropped a bunch of adverts for Apple Intelligence – a new AI built right into their devices. It can rewrite emails, create images and use Siri better. But is it any good?
Stand out10 min
Stand out10 min14 Jul

Ramblings 1

The origin of the phrase "Time is money"
Most of us have heard this phrase before. Maybe even used it once or twice. It means that your time holds the same value as money.
Stand out2 min
Stand out2 min14 Jul

Want to keep up with our latest content?

Get our newsletter
Confusing words blog cover image
Blog Attract 4 min read

Why complex writing makes you look stupid

Lewis Dowling Managing Director and Consultant

Ever thought complicated writing makes you sound smarter? Think again. This post shows how complex language, bad fonts, and even low printer toner can make you seem less intelligent.

Contents

Ever thought complicated writing makes you sound smarter? Think again. This post shows how complex language, bad fonts, and even low printer toner can make you seem less intelligent.

Have you ever fiddled with an essay to make it longer? Ever used long, complicated language just to make a report seem more professional? Ever picked a word simply because it sounded smarter?

Well, that probably backfired. You probably looked dumber. At least, that’s what Daniel Oppenheimer (not that Oppenheimer) found in his paper:

Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly.

In that paper, there are three highlights that matter. First, complicated writing is harder to read. (Not really a surprise.) Second, complicated writing is less effective than simple writing. (Again, not a surprise.)

But the third might be a bit of an eye-opener. The harder your writing is to read, the less intelligent you look.

So let’s look at the experiments.

Experiment one: Complex writing won’t get you into college

Daniel found some college applications. He then tweaked them to make two more versions: a moderately complex one and a highly complex one.

He gave these to a bunch of participants and asked three questions. Would they accept the application? How confident were they in their choice? And how difficult was the application to understand?

And? People were less likely to accept the complex versions.

 Complexity neither disguised the shortcomings of poor essays, nor enhanced the appeal of high-quality essays,” Daniel wrote.

So what’s going on? Well, it’s all down to fluency. Daniel reckoned that simple text was better than complex simply because it was easier to read.

Experiment two: Complex writing hurts you, even if you’re known to be smart

That first experiment could’ve been a fluke. Maybe if the reader thought the author was brilliant, the complex language would actually reinforce their belief?

So Daniel ran a second experiment. He found a couple of translations for Descartes’ Mediation IV. One complex translation, one simple translation.

He told some participants that it was from Descarte, and others that it was from an anonymous author. (And yes, he made sure that his participants knew Descartes’ reputation, but hadn’t read Mediation IV before. No bias there.)

Unsurprisingly, if people knew the writing was from Descartes, it generally scored a few points more than the anonymous version. But in each case, the complex translation scored less than its simple counterpart. Even Descartes was seen as less intelligent if the translation was complex.

So your reputation does seem to boost your baseline score. But the more complex the writing, the less intelligent you’ll look.

Experiment three: Longer words are bad

Again, the first experiment might’ve been wrong. He’d made the writing more complex. Maybe that’d simply garbled the meaning. So Daniel tried it the other way around. What if he took complex bits of writing and made them simpler?

Daniel found a few abstracts and created simple versions of them. The complex versions used long words. The simple versions used shorter words.

The results confirmed the first experiment. People saw the complex abstracts as less intelligent and more difficult to understand.

Experiment four: Even a bad font hurts you

At this point, Daniel points out that the three experiments show a trend. If it’s hard to read, it’s seen as less intelligent. But bad writing isn’t the only thing that makes something hard to read.

If the fluency hypothesis is correct, then any manipulation that substantially reduces fluency should also reduce intelligence ratings,” Daniel said.


So he simply changed the font.

One text had an easy-to-read font. One had a hard-to-read font.

And, wouldn’t you know? People rated the hard-to-read font as less intelligent.

This backs up the points from the other experiments. The harder something is to read – even if that’s just your font choice – the less intelligent you’ll appear.

Experiment five: People forgive you if the cause is obvious

Daniel knew from other experiments that if something is hard to read, and there’s an obvious reason, they’ll forgive the writer. In fact, they’ll overcompensate. (Font, by the way, doesn’t have this effect. People don’t really notice the font consciously.)

Instead, he did the low-toner test. He printed a college application twice. One version was normal, but the other version looked like the printer was low on ink.

What happened? Well, people were now more likely to accept the application and thought the writer more intelligent, just because it was printed on low-toner ink.

So it really is about fluency. Yes, if that source is super obvious, people will discount it. But that’s a fickle trend. What counts as obvious?

Make your writing easy to read

All in all, the results are clear. Sure, it’s not a huge study. And there might be times when a longer word is actually simpler than a bunch of short ones. Daniel also didn’t test the extreme opposite – writing like Dr. Seuss. But ultimately, the easier your writing is to read, the more intelligent you’ll look.

As Daniel concluded, “The pundits are likely right: write clearly and simply if you can, and you’ll be more likely to be thought of as intelligent.”

Filed under

  • Attract