In middle school, I had a creative nonfiction writing assignment to write a story about an event from my life. It had to be at least a page.

I wrote about the time my uncle’s dog escaped during a family vacation, and my cousins and I chased after him in a dramatic fence-hopping high-speed pursuit. It was a page and a half.

When I showed it to a classmate, he said, “Wow! I can’t believe you managed to write so much about that!”

At that time, there was no higher praise.

Words, Words, Words

In my academic writing career, the goal was always to write longer. The assignments always had a length-based requirement: a minimum, rarely a maximum. It had to be five sentences, then five paragraphs, three pages, five pages, and eventually twenty pages. The longer the work, the more points it was worth.

As students, we accomplished these wordcount demands by shoving in extraneous words. Every noun got two adjectives, or maybe three if we were way under the word count. Contractions were out, because two words were always better than one. We even increased the font size of the periods to give them a little but subtle boost.

But it wasn’t just about the total length. We wanted to use long paragraphs, each with a topic sentence, several supporting sentences, and a closing summary sentence. We wanted complex sentences that showcased our ability to use varied phrases and clauses. We wanted long SAT-worthy words. Excuse me, I mean verbiage. Or pleonasm. Or both.

Claiming it was only about length is, of course, hyperbole. The ultimate goal of academic writing is to showcase how smart you are. You need to prove to your teacher that you read and understood the book (or theorem, event, etc.).

Perhaps the best (or worst) example of this comes from Sigmund Freud:

“So, I gave my lecture yesterday. Despite the lack of preparation, I spoke quite well and without hesitation, which I ascribe to the cocaine I had taken before hand. I told about my discoveries in brain anatomy, all very difficult things that the audience certainly did not understand, but all that matters is that they get the impression that I understand it.”

This is academic writing—and terrible.

Our writing didn’t inform; it said “I’m smart, I’m smart” on repeat.

In hindsight, it was objectively bad writing, but it’s what we were trained to do. It’s what we were rewarded for.

Good Writing

So what is “good” writing?

Good writing communicates. It’s natural. It’s how we talk. The goal isn’t to make yourself sound smart, but to make your reader understand something they didn’t before—and ideally be entertained along the way.

Good writing is easy to read and as short as will do the job. When the audience is the public, this means short sentences in active voice and without jargon.

And, perhaps counterintuitively, this will make you sound smarter. In a study by University of California Los Angeles, participants judged authors as more confident and intelligent when they used shorter words. Once you think about it, it makes sense: the better your reader understands you, the smarter they think you are. You’ll also earn their trust and appreciation.

This writing style does not just apply to the public. Everyone is busy. Even experts benefit from easy-to-read language that uses bulleted lists, headings, subheadings, and graphics—things I never used in my English classes; however, interestingly, these were tools I used when writing for my science classes.

Breaking the Habit

It took me a long time to break the bad habits ingrained in me from academic writing.

However, I don’t think it has to, and I’ve had several impressive examples to back up that claim: the interns I’ve worked with through the Werner H. Kirsten Student Intern Program. Through this program, my office gets a Frederick County high school senior as an intern each year.

They typically start off writing like they’ve been trained: in big, bulky paragraphs that use the most complicated vocabulary they can think of.

However, once they’ve been introduced to plain language, not only do they become better writers—they tend to enjoy it. When allowed to escape the confines of the five-paragraph essay, they excel. Even though it goes against the way they’ve been trained for twelve years, they embrace plain language and manage to convey complex scientific and legal terms in impressive lay language.

I remember one intern expressing delight that he could just write “use” when he wanted to say “use.” He didn’t have to say “utilize” or fish for another fancy word.

These students pick it up quickly—in part because the students in this program are incredibly bright and ambitious but also because it’s a more natural way to communicate.

Imagine what incredible communicators we could all be if we were taught to write with the goal of effective communication from a young age.