Writers are exposed to a myriad of different topics during their careers, and their vocabulary will expand because of that. After hours of research, they are bound to pick up the language these subjects employ, whether that be the jargon of auto glass or the diction often used in marketing articles. This gives them a vast toolkit, a spectrum of wonderful words they can use to communicate with readers.
However, as much as a wide vocabulary can help a writer, it can also hurt them immensely. There is nothing that determines the quality of a text more than how clearly it conveys its ideas, and vocabulary is the easiest way to fail at maintaining clarity. An overabundance of jargon or complex words can leave your audience confused or intimidated by your work, leading to a high click-off rate or your writing lacking real impact. But how do you stop this from happening? Especially with industry-specific pieces, jargon is a must, and complex words are sometimes necessary for accuracy.
The solution isn’t to avoid these words entirely; they’re an incredibly valuable part of your arsenal. What you should do, though, is analyze the surroundings of what you’re writing. What’s your target audience? Where will this mostly be read? Where will it be published? Understanding the conditions your piece will actually be operating under will inform you of what vocabulary terms you should use and which ones to steer clear of.
When to Use Jargon in Your Writing
Jargon can be extremely difficult to properly insert into a piece, but its importance cannot be understated. When someone is writing a guide, informative blog post, or other explanatory texts, using professional terms is how you show credibility and educate novices. You need it in your work. Integrating it properly is a matter of being focused on your topic selection paragraph-by-paragraph; jargon should be peppered throughout a piece when needed, and if you need it too often, that is a literary red flag.
Say you’re writing a guide on SEO, and you need to do a section on header tags. What you shouldn’t do is have multiple hyper-specific paragraphs dedicated to explaining what a header tag is, its different types, and their use cases. That will be daunting and confusing to readers, which is both harmful to your work and completely unnecessary. People reading the guide want quick, useful information; they didn’t search up a course, after all. A simple bulleted list with the types and a short blurb on what they actually do is more than enough. It’s much easier to digest for people and is a significantly more convenient read. The focused topic selection is key in this scenario. The sharp lens prompts you to avoid overexplanation, instead cutting to the core of what you’re writing about and allowing jargon to be naturally included in the text without compromising any clarity.
I’ve personally had to utilize this precise topical scope when I was writing the article Selling a House Before 2 Years: A Guide for First-Time Sellers. In essence, this blog post is an explanation of how to lower the impact of capital gains tax on your profit if you want to sell a house before owning it for 2 years. Like anything regarding taxes, the subject matter was complicated, but I was able to write an informative and approachable article by simply referencing the title. The point of the piece was to explain to first-time home sellers how to lower the impact of taxation to maximize their profits, and this was my north star while writing. I included necessary jargon when needed, but by focusing my literary lens, I avoided overusing it, resulting in a professional, credible, and helpful composition.
How to Use Longer Words Correctly
Big words are more than just fancy ways to communicate. Oftentimes, they’re the best way to structure a specific sentence or are essential to being entirely accurate when explaining something. The unique meanings of more complicated language will benefit every writer, but these lesser-known terms are bound to muddy the readability of a work when used liberally. To prevent this, you need to enact a simple writing philosophy. Basic words are the priority, as these are understandable to a wider audience, while longer, more complex terms must be reserved for use in highly technical or creative sections of a piece, which are the only places in writing where credibility, precise accuracy, or emotion can be more important than sheer clarity.
For instance, an article that breaks down a recipe could easily say something like “braise the meat’s top, bottom, and side ends in a hot saucepan until golden brown.” However, the more advanced language there would be less accessible to amateurs, so most articles about recipes will simply tell the reader to fry the meat in a general pan for a certain amount of time, taking care to cook every end. Why is this? Because, in reality, if the instructions are functional and followed correctly, the final product will turn out well. Adding more complex wording simply serves to harm information flow. A statement like the aforementioned one would work much better in a document containing a specific restaurant’s recipes, though, as precise accuracy is much more valuable in that context.
I had to learn how to incorporate long words in their proper place during my time writing for Entertainment Analytical. While I was focused on writing mostly informative, educational content on that website, I also wrote a fair amount of reviews, many of which were my strongest pieces in terms of SEO. Complex diction was needed for my informational compositions because I needed to showcase my credibility and present sources confidently, but when it came to reviews, a simpler approach allowed for my most visible works to be easily understandable. This made them all the better in search engines and for readers.
Whether you’re honing in on a topic or prioritizing simple language, what you’re really doing is identifying and working within your literary surroundings. You’re thinking about who will be reading your work, what they’re actually looking for, and where your piece is. Using that information, you can understand the best vocabulary to employ for your compositions. By doing this, you can use one of the most fundamental writing tools to its maximum effect.
Luke Princeton Nazaire 