Please Don’t Dumb Down Your Writing

21 reasons that consider you, your readers, your content, language itself, and how they all relate

Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash.

According to the Literacy Project, something like 17% of American adults are functionally illiterate and half can’t read a book written at an 8th-grade level. The Center for Plain Language advises that “your audience’s reading age is lower than you think” and suggests writing at the 7th/8th grade level (12–14 years old), noting that the UK government advises writing government-produced material at the reading level of 9 year olds.

There is a case to be made in many instances for using the simplest words, the plainest syntax, and other writing approaches that make reading as easy and accessible as possible. You need or want to reach as many people as possible. You’re delivering crucial medical, emergency, or government services information. You’re sharing basic facts on the internet for others to look up and refer to. Your audience is not comprised of native speakers of the language you write in. And so on.

But there are also many reasons to not dumb down, er, simplify your writing. Or convert it all to straightforward plainspeak. These reasons relate to you, your readers, your message, language itself, or the interplay of these things.