The Secret of Impressive Writing

Daniel M. Oppenheimer has written about problems with using long words needlessly in the 2005 journal of applied cognitive psychology. Through his series of five experiments he found that students who wrote in an accessible tone without gratuitous embellishments or pretentious academic buzzwords walked away seeming more intelligent than those who inflated their prose with linguistic fodder at an attempt to seem more intelligent. The studies also touched on typography and formatting noting that accessibility and clarity were again paramount. So in summary; like so many things in life, if you want people to think you’re intelligent then do not try too hard.