Complicated language can hide uncomplicated thinking.

GRATITUDE

WHAT THIS MEANS

Dense language is frequently a sign that the thinking underneath has not been finished. Once someone genuinely understands something, they can usually say it plainly, and the elaborate version tends to be either a hedge or a way of avoiding a claim that could be checked. Vagueness dressed in vocabulary reads as expertise and functions as protection.

Try writing your position in short sentences a stranger could follow. Where the translation is hard, the thinking is probably incomplete. Fix the thought rather than the phrasing.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH

Where do you use big words to cover thin thinking?

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