Simplify Your Language To Sound Smarter in Presentations. Here’s Why.

When I was growing up, my family would spend every weekday night around the dinner table, chatting about our days. At some point, most of our conversations turned into some type of academic debate; we would lovingly argue about mathematical riddles and complex grammar challenges. Even now, my brother will correct my grammar or debate my logic at the drop of a hat. If I misuse a word, or incorrectly structure a sentence, he will interject, and ask, do you want to rethink that sentence?

Considering my family’s tendency to challenge one another to be the smartest person at the dinner table, it’s no wonder that I often reach for the thesaurus when crafting content. Not only do I love the way unusual words and creative sentence structures roll off my tongue, but I also like to keep my vocabulary in tip-top shape so I can keep up with conversations with my competitive family members.

It seems I am not alone in my tendency to overcomplicate my content.

In a poll of 110 Stanford undergrads, most admitted they’d changed the words in an academic essay to sound more intelligent by using complicated language, according to Business Insider.

As much as I love using the thesaurus as well as crafting flowery content that communicates ideas in unexpected ways, these are bad habits that I need to break. I need to develop content on a foundation of simple words and easy to understand sentences.

If you also love the thesaurus and flowery language, you too should try to simplify your communication.

Why?

Authors and speakers who use simple language are perceived as smarter than communicators who unnecessarily complicate their message with big words and complex sentences.

The Research

Daniel M. Oppenheimer, professor of psychology at the UCLA Anderson School of Management conducted a series of experiments to test how language can make one appear more or less intelligent. The general gist of the results of the studies is the ease of processing information is strongly associated with positive qualities such as confidence, intelligence, and capability, according to Fast Company.

To use your content, either written or spoken, to demonstrate your confidence, intelligence, and competence, make your message easier to understand.

Sometimes a long word is more accurate than a short word, and in such cases, you should opt for the longer word to ensure that your message is as accurate as possible, however try to use easier to comprehend language as much as possible and only use long words and complex sentences when absolutely necessary.

What is your score?

As I have reported before, in 2007 Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell each delivered a presentation at the same conference. During their presentations, each spoke below a collegiate level. Jobs spoke at approximately a 5th grade level; Dell spoke at a 9th grade level; Gates spoke at a 10th grade level.

Between these three speakers, Jobs was ranked by the audience to be the most impactful speaker. Clearly Jobs has the ability to speak above a 5th grade level. His ability to simplify his big ideas however is a helpful tool when communicating to an audience at a conference. Follow in his footsteps and simplify your message so a 5th grader can comprehend all of your points.

To help you judge the level of difficulty of your content, visit Readability-Score.com

As you can see in the screenshot below, the first two paragraphs of this section rank at a 10th grade level, with a readability to score of 60.2.

The higher the readability score, the better. And the reverse is true for grade level; the lower the better for most scenarios.

readability presentation content

Considering those results, I still need to simplify my language and improve the readability of my content. To do so, I should remove unnecessary words, replace complex words with simpler synonyms, and shorten paragraphs and sentences.

How does your content rank? Let me know by tweeting me at @Ethos3.

Conclusion

To sound smarter and be a more effective communicator, simplify, simplify, simplify. The more easily you can simplify complex concepts, the more intelligent you will sound.

Additional Resources:

The Secret to Sounding Smart? Using Simple Language 

Researchers discovered the key to sounding smart — and it may surprise you

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