If you want to be understood, and if you want your ideas to spread, you need to use effective language. In the modern world of business and politics, imprecise language is used intentionally to avoid taking a position and offending various demographics. No wonder it’s hard to make sense of anything!

This is hardly a recent problem, and George Orwell, a famous English writer, wrote in his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language, that there are 5 rules for effective writing:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

I hope you find these rules helpful, and through their application we’re able to understand each other a little bit better.