On Five Dollar Words

Be kind; please rewind!

When I was younger, my father taught me a twist on Mark Twain’s maxim. Twain is attributed with the quote: “Don’t use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.” Presumably this comes to teach us that there’s no need to use jargon and “fancy language” to make us sound smarter or boost our egos.

As an Air Force pilot instructor, my dad referred to a different version: “Don’t use a 50 cent word when two 25 cent words will do.” The goal isn’t just avoiding unnecessary jargon, but breaking your content down into more simple language so that your audience, however unfamiliar, can better understand it. It might take longer to state an idea in plain words, but it is very worthwhile to consider your audience and their mental model(s) of your topic. You may be building on a foundation that you think is there, when in reality your audience is struggling to keep up. Especially during in-person technical conversations with colleagues, sometimes we need to take a step back and explain something before we go forward again.

I think about this advice whenever I’m writing or talking, especially about anything remotely technical. I can’t claim that I have been extremely diligent or talented at putting it into practice, but I really do make an effort to ensure that my audience can understand what I’m intending to communicate. I consider this skill an essential part of being a mentor or coach.

I believe we tend to regularly embrace our impostor syndrome. While listening to an expert on a given topic, if we are confused about something, we can assume that everyone else listening knows what they are talking about, and there must be a large knowledge gap between us and the speaker. If we ask for clarification, we might somehow embarrass ourselves. As speakers and writers, this dynamic is something that we want to proactively avoid creating. At the same time, we have to be careful not to patronize our audience and assume they know nothing, are ignorant, or are somehow less than us. It’s a balance, and I think it has to do with attitude.

I was inspired to write down the thoughts in this post by a few disparate events: Chiefly, by my early musings while reading Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft. While I appreciate the content of the book so far, it’s “chock full” of five dollar words. I don’t fault him too much for it; It’s not difficult to see where he’s coming from. He’s a philosopher. I read theological and philosophical discourses from time to time, so he’s coming from a world I’m somewhat familiar with. I’m just afraid that his message will be lost on people that don’t have time to look up too much “fancy language.” Also, as a hobby mechanic myself, with a foot in that community, I would have difficulty recommending it to some of my “get to the point” shop friends.

In addition, this concept is also fresh in my mind after RStudio Conf 2020, where I saw a lot of great speeches by experts in certain niche skills that did an amazing job catering to the audience’s various levels of knowledge without being patronizing.

Finally, on motivation for writing blog posts, Oscar Baruffa had some interesting insight that spurred me to compose this: