Before I began writing this blog, I had no idea what ‘sesquipedalian’ meant. I googled it.
And before I explain to you what it actually means, I want you to know about the two types of people who you'll meet in your life.
I will also tell you which type you should aspire to become and the one you shouldn't.
Do you remember the time when we were kids?
Our teachers used to give us new English words and ask us to learn their meanings.
Some words were easy.
But most words were just plain hard. And we hated them, didn’t we?
And guess what, this is something I learnt so much later in my life.
People not only hate these ‘big words’ but also the people who use them.
To make it much simpler, have you read through a passage in a sales copy, a poem, a novel or a non-fiction book and wondered what the hell the writer was trying to convey? That writer was being a sesquipedalian a**h***.
Have you ever listened to a friend who rambled on and on and you got zilch at the end of the conversation? Yes, they were being a sesquipedalian a**h*** too.
There are many reasons why people like to use big words, but two are at the top:
People use big words because they want to sound knowledgeable
People use big words because they’re insecure with themselves or their ideas
I don’t know any other reason that will not fall under the ambit of the above two.
Reading them becomes a chore. For every line you read you’ll have to spend double the time googling what it means. It kicks you out of the flow of the passage.
It’s like cheap candy covered in a shiny wrapper.
Now, over to the type of person I want you to be.
Avoid jargon from your dictionary.
And for my friends who suffer the wounds of legalese and financialese and other niches that are notorious for having industry jargons, snap out of it.
Doesn't matter if you're presenting to your client or dirty talking to your partner, try your best to make your language and ideas simple.
If you're in the financial space and your copy can’t help a 12-year-old kid who picks his nose to understand your financial predictions in cryptocurrency's vulnerability against the backdrop of government policy (see what I did there?), in my books, your writing sucks big time.
If I had to ask what the words in your poem meant, your writing sucks.
For in writing, the most important thing is the ‘idea’. Not how ‘big’ or ‘confusing’ you make it for your audience.
In other words, big ideas are usually simple ones. And they can be usually explained away in simple terms.
When you use ornamental language to express your thoughts in writing, it only raises the suspicion on the credibility of your ideas.
If you still don’t believe me, google the top chart busters of the decade. Read the lyrics, even a five-year-old will get them.
That not only applies to songs. It also applies to marketing as well.
That’s why I love the copy that Steve Jobs used when announcing the first iPod. He didn’t say it was an electronic gadget capable of storing X Gbs of audio files. He told it was like having a ‘thousand songs in your pocket’.
Get it?
That’s why I guess Chetan Bhagat’s novels are a serial hit. They’re simple. They pulled in a new set of readers in India who otherwise wouldn’t have picked a book.
Now, is he a great contemporary author? That's another argument. But you get my drift...
That’s why we love to read Hemingway. His language is simplified to the bare essentials that reading him is a breeze.
Making things simple enough for your readers to understand is way harder than using a lot of mumbo-jumbo to merely impress them.
I was once a sesquipedalian a**h*** too.
Especially at the time I began writing professionally. It took time and practice to unlearn what school taught me and make my words simpler while making the ideas behind them bigger. And it’s a never-ending journey.
With some effort, you can too.
Now, there’s an exception to the rule, as always is. Where you can use hard words, big words and get away with them. But I guess, that’ll be for another blog.
No apologies if I have hurt the sentiments of any Shashi Tharoors in the house :P
So if there’s one thing you take away from this blog, this is it – Don’t be a sesquipedalian a**h***.
See you in another useful blog :)
PS. I hope you understood what ‘sesquipedalian’ meant without having to open the dictionary.
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