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Blog 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.”