How to write normally

Journalist Tim Phillips is the author of Talk Normal: Stop the Business Speak Jargon and Waffle. He says:

Number one: try to be understood by everybody you’re speaking to. One of the things about jargon is that we get a lot of pleasure out of it because it puts us in the “in” group, the people who understand the jargon. But we have a responsibility to the people in the “out” group, the people who don't understand the jargon, as well. So try to be understood by everyone you’re speaking to. 

The second principle is stop trying to sound clever if sounding clever doesn’t get you anywhere. Anyone can explain the difficult things so that it sounds like they’re difficult. It really takes insight to take something that’s complex and make it sound simple for people to create understanding. And really, that’s what we should be doing with language. 

The third principle is that it’s about attitude; it’s not about rules. I make jargon mistakes and grammar mistakes all the time. All journalists do. Fortunately, we have people who work as copy editors to fix those for us. If we get hung up on the rules, we’ll lose sight of what we’re here to do, which is to communicate with each other and be understood.

Eschew obfuscation.