Page 85 - 100 Great Copywriting Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

36 LONG WORDS DON’T
ALWAYS MAKE YOU
SOUND MORE
INTELLIGENT

There’s a widely held idea that the more long words you use, and the
longer they are, the more intelligent you sound. One of my clients
routinely used to talk about supporting people until I pointed out
that all they really were doing was helping them. A mild example,
but an example all the same.

At its most egregious, this overblown style of writing crushes the
life out of its selling message under a sackload of polysyllables. But
sounding intelligent isn’t the same thing as being understood. And
in copywriting, if your reader doesn’t understand you, they’re very
unlikely to buy from you.

The idea

From The Economist, a business magazine
Trying to come up with a training exercise for a copywriting
workshop I was due to run, I flicked idly through a back issue of
The Economist. Published during the 2008 American presidential
race, it had a long article analyzing John McCain and his campaign.
I noticed that among the long, sophisticated words and phrases,
what we might call high register language, there were an awful lot
of very plain, almost slangy words—or low register. Here are the
20 words picked out:

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