Bigger Isn't Always Better

If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.

~ Albert Einstein

Never use a long word when a short one will do.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. 

~ George Orwell

I read a lot of newbie writers. Want to know what they all have in common? Verbosity. Yikes, I just might've trashed my own advice with that word. Let me try again . . . a common error that new writers make is using big words and too many of them. That better?

The bottom line is that people don't want to read words they have to look up. Ain't nobody got time for that. So keep it simple. Keep it straightforward. And if you need help doing that, have I found a handy dandy application for you.

Cleartext by Morton Just is a text editor that simplifies your language. All you do is enter in what you've written and it will simplify the words for you. It uses only the top 1,000 words in the English language so it makes the text super simple to read. Best of all, it's free. A stupendously frugal opportunity. Translation: a really good deal.