The Science Writer's Secret
Writers who use long words needlessly and choose complicated font styles are
seen as less intelligent than those who stick with basic vocabulary and
plain text, according to new research from Princeton University in New
Jersey, to be published in a forthcoming issue of Applied Cognitive
Psychology.
This implies that efforts to impress readers by using florid font styles and
searching through a thesaurus may have the opposite effect.
Study author Daniel Oppenheimer based his findings on students' responses to
writing samples for which the complexity of the font or vocabulary was
systematically manipulated. In a series of five experiments, he found that
people tended to rate the intelligence of authors who wrote essays in
simpler language, using an easy to read font, as higher than those who
authored more complex works.
"It's important to point out that this research is not about problems with
using long words but about using long words needlessly," said study author
Daniel Oppenheimer.
"Anything that makes a text hard to read and understand, such as
unnecessarily long words or complicated fonts, will lower readers'
evaluations of the text and its author."
The samples of text included graduate school applications, sociology
dissertation abstracts, and translations of a work of Descartes. Times New
Roman and italicised Juice font were used in samples to further assess the
effect of fluency on rating levels.
Interestingly, by making people aware that the source of low fluency was
irrelevant to judgement, Oppenheimer found that they overcompensated and
became biased in the opposite direction. In a final experiment, he provided
samples of text printed with normal and low printer toner levels. The low
toner levels made the text harder to read, but readers were able to identify
the toner as being responsible for the difficulty, and therefore didn't
blame the authors.
"The continuing popularity amongst students of using big words and
attractive font styles may be due to the fact that they may not realise
these techniques could backfire," Oppenheimer noted.
"One thing seems certain: write as simply and plainly as possible and it's
more likely you'll be thought of as intelligent."