Issue 135 – May 2024
Short words are a shortcut to understanding
Replacing multisyllable words with short, familiar ones can make your documents more readable. Here are some easy swaps to make.
The easier we make it to read what we write, the more people actually will read it. Even more important, they’ll understand and remember it.
That’s a key part of plain language: Helping readers find what they need; understand what they find; and use what they find to meet their needs.
Some of my clients ask me to edit their documents to make them easier to read, and here’s one fast fix: Replace multisyllable words with short, familiar, skimmable ones. Here’s a taste of some of the 300+ words I’ve suggested simplifying:
- Acquiesce: Allow, agree to
- Adhere to: Stick to
- Alleviate: Ease, reduce, relieve
- Assist: Help
- Bespoke (this one is also jargon): Customized
- Circumstances: Cases, situations
- Circumvent: Evade, bypass
- Cognizant: Aware
- Coherent: Logical, reasoned
- Commencement: Start
- Commensurate: Matching, corresponding
- Conflated: Blended, merged
- Constitute: Are, make up, form
- Countervailing: Opposing, counteracting
- Contiguous: Successive
- De facto: Actual, real
- Detriment: Harm, damage
- Disparate: Different, dissimilar, diverse
- Elicit: Draw out, bring out, prompt
- Employs: Uses
- Encapsulate: Sum up, summarize
- Envisage: Imagine, forecast, predict
- Exogenous: External
- Expeditiously: Speedily, quickly
- Granularity: Detail
- Impediments: Barriers
- Implement: Do, begin, set up, carry out
- Inception: Founding, beginning
- Intrinsic: Built in, ingrained
- Leverage: Use
- Manifest: Obvious, clear
- Mechanisms: Tools, techniques, structure
- Misfeasance: Negligence, wrongful conduct
- Nascent: Early
- Notwithstanding: Despite
- Obtain: Get
- Onerous: Demanding, difficult, cumbersome
- Opaque: Unclear, murky, hazy
- Ostensibly: Apparently
- Panacea: Cure, remedy
- Paramount: Main, foremost, principal
- Pervasive: Extensive, widespread
- Pragmatic: Sensible, practical
- Propensity: Tendency, inclination
- Protracted: Extended
- Providing: If
- Recalcitrant: Uncooperative, defiant
- Rectify: Fix
- Require: Need
- Remediable: Fixable
- Spurious: False
- Stringent: Strict
- Sufficient: Enough
- Supplant: Replace
- Ubiquitous: Seen everywhere
Your copy reviewers may absolutely love a particular elaborate word, and sure, you can let one or two go. But an entire document stuffed with them? No. That’s not a shortcut, that’s taking the long way around.
What wordy writing have you run across? Have you found it hard to convince a reviewer that simple is better? Tell me about it! And let me know if you need help fighting the war on wordiness.
Related reading:
What is plain language anyway?
Plain language keeps it clear (October 2023 Wordnerdery)
More in the Red Jacket Diaries:
Writing and storytelling tips in links you might have missed
Assignment: Find the secrets to a happy retirement
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