Dumb it down, please

Stop trying to sound smart.

I’m serious. You don’t need to.

As a reader, I don’t want to look things up just because you feel like being pretentious.

So treat your prose like a zen garden: unclutter it and get rid of anything you don’t need.

Prune your sentences relentlessly. Lose the jargon. Kill adjectives or adverbs if they don’t add anything.

Most news is written at a ninth grade level. You should have a pretty good reason if you want to be more complicated than that.

And know that I’m happy for you to underestimate me.

I promise I don’t mind.