Are You An Over-Educated Word Snob?

Long Complex Words Make Readers Think You Are A Snob or A Fake

 

education for bloggers

 

Today I listened to the ProBlogger podcast PB052: 10 Writing Tips to Help You Sound More Human, here. You can go there later to listen to the whole thing, but stay with me for a bit to think about this one idea.

 

 

It’s full of great advice from “Beth Dunn, Product Editor-in-Chief at HubSpot. In [this] podcast episode, Beth shares really practical tips and strategies you can use for helping you sound more human in the way you write your blog content.”

 

Overall I found this very helpful for someone like me that’s still (perpetually – um, I mean always) struggling to figure out how to blog, and blog well. All of these tips are intended to build your brand through managing how your readers perceive (see) you.

 

use simpler, shorter words

 

But there was one tip that I really related to, and that was #2: Convey that you’re honest. How? Beth suggests that the way to do this is to use simpler, shorter words, which go a long way to making you sound more trustworthy. Moreover, using long, complex words takes more brain power both to read and to understand. This “cognitive burden” as ProBlogger host Darren Rouse suggests, takes more time and energy, neither of which your readers – that is my readers – you – have to spare.

 

Let me tell you a story

 

But first I have to confess that, as a child, I was a really annoying little prig. I didn’t know this at the time, of course. But with my blue eyes, and blonde ringlets, my Pollyanna notions and goody-two-shoes righteousness, I must have been obnoxious. I was one of those kids who didn’t like dirt, noise, old people, other kids—especially boys, sharing my things, not getting my own way, or my food touching. Yeah, like that.

 

 

 

I can remember a time, about grade four maybe, when some kid in the back of class pitched a rubber eraser at some girl’s head and made her cry, and no one would fess up. Classic scenario. The poor beleaguered (er, I mean long-suffering) nuns (yes, I know, Catholic school *eye roll*) decided to haul each and every kid in the class down to the principal’s office, one at a time, trying to intimidate (scare?) a confession out of someone, anyone, by threatening the strap.

 

By the time my turn came, my stiff little back was up and those nuns didn’t stand a chance. I strode in there and announced (in my undoubtedly squeaky, righteous little girl voice): “I didn’t do anything wrong and you have NO RIGHT to strap me!” They smiled and thanked me (probably laughing into their wimples) and sent me back to class. Presumably that’s what happened to everyone else too, but in my arrogant little mind, it was the way I’d handled it. I’d told them!

 

 

I was a word-nerd from the start, and because I loved words, ideas, books and learning, of course I loved school. That right there was enough to make me unpopular.

 

 

I wasn’t unpopular, though. Not really. I wasn’t Miss Congeniality, but I always had friends. And I didn’t mind be the teacher’s pet. I wasn’t mean or rude or a snob. I was polite to everyone and never stepped out of bounds, so my nose was squeaky clean.

 

 

How to win friends and influence people:

act dumb[er]?

 

 

When I was nine years old, we moved to a new, faraway neighborhood. For about a year and a half, I bussed into town to the same school. But after a while, I got to know some local kids and decided I wanted to go to the local elementary school. Now picture grade six.

 

 

 

It was a pretty hip school, with open areas and blended grades and other new-agey ideas from the 1970’s that probably had merit, but didn’t amount to much teaching and learning. Coming from my strict Catholic school culture, I was light years ahead academically.

 

 

apparently, I used really big words

 

 

 

And, apparently, I used really big words. My new classmates were quick to point this out, and to ridicule me relentlessly (um, non-stop) for it. It hurt. After all, I was just being my genuinely priggish little self. I wasn’t a snob or trying to lord it over them. Just using my “god-given” talents.

 

 

Think about it for a sec. If you ask someone like Malcolm Gladwell or educator and author of The Element Ken Robinson they’ll tell you that it’s the combination of a spark of talent, a lot of passion and a thousand hours of practice that create success. So if you take someone like, I don’t know, Keith Richards say, who’s spent his long, long, long life playing the guitar and singing, you’d expect him to be pretty good at it. You wouldn’t say to him that he should pull his punches so he doesn’t look like a snob, or like he’s trying too hard. Would you?

 

 

 

Back to my story. Wishing to be at least somewhat popular, I quickly adapted to this new hostile environment by dumbing down my language. I used simpler, shorter words, learned to speak some kind of regular kid vernacular (slang?), and spiced things up with vulgar swear words to be safe. I still speak a little like this, though I do know how to write “proper English.”

 

 

Later on in life, I thought I’d probably short-changed myself. With more support, maybe I could have taken that edge and turned it into future opportunities: scholarships, better jobs, an earlier start to my writing career, maybe. Who knows?

 

 

I’m not saying you can’t communicate intelligent ideas with simple words. But the English language has so many. It just seems like such a waste. What do you think? If this is true, and apparently it is, where can a person put a good education use?

 

 

I promised myself that I would never again be untrue to myself. I would never pretend to be something that I was not. And I would never sell my own strengths and talents short. And if people didn’t like it, well, too bad for them. That was who I was.

 

 

And now they’re telling me I have to exchange my hard-earned vocabulary for a simpler, more reader-friendly one in order to appear honest and trustworthy. My inner prig is pouting.

 

 

I want to throw a party for other disadvantaged over-educated intellectual snobs so everyone can show off their language mastery and toss as many big words around as they like. It would be very exclusive. No wait, that sounds like a university faculty party full of boring and pretentious boors. Bad idea.

 

 

Tell me what you think. Were you every ridiculed for being too good at something? Do you prefer to read blog posts and articles that use simple shorter words rather than stretching your knowledge of the English language and keeping the bar high? I look forward to hearing your opinion.