Simplicity & the audience

I've always been a fan of keeping things simple. I know too many people who are stuck in a literary limbo between the essay-writing rules they learned in middle school, and the excessive, befuddling loquaciousness that they learned in adulthood to sound smarter. When someone jumps into a long-winded explanation (whether it's politics, industry jargon, or board game instructions), I'm the person that jumps in to conclude with a one-sentence summary.

I think one major thing that confuses writers is the different between the written and the spoken word. When speaking, I find it perfectly fine to be as plain or as prosaic as you like. Too many people are criticized for their speech when it's as essential an aspect of culture as anything else. Saying "like" or "y'all" or even 'useless' words like "a bit" or "sort of" are a perfectly natural part of speaking, and don't deserve the same criticism, especially in a casual setting. It's writing that (generally) needs to be more strict.

Many of those early guidelines can easily come back to trip us up once we've outgrown them, like training wheels on a bicycle. Adult authors don't need to fear, say, writing in the first person, inserting our opinions or, (the horror!) using contractions.

Instead, I remain deeply convinced that authors should write, for the most part, the same way that they speak. If you genuinely use words like "garrulous" or "furthermore" in conversation, then more power to you. For the rest of us, though: achieve simplicity by reading what you write aloud. Does it sound like you? Or does it sound pompous, indecisive, or however you feel an author ought to sound?

If it sounds more like the latter, I would suggest going back for some reviewing and rephrasing. Writing like this injects your style into every paragraph, keeping the reader engaged and understanding. It's no substitute for proper sentence structure, and no excuse for losing readers for poor grammar or syntax, but it is an essential piece nonetheless.