Seth Godin Gives A Thumbs Up To Fingerprints
By Jim Symcox on Oct 29, 2007 in Amazon Book Store, Winston Churchill
Seth Godin has posted about an interesting exercise where Steven Johnson noticed some stats that Amazon presents about books it sells.
The stats basically reveal the sentence complexity of each book. So Steven did a little more research and discovered that every writer has their own style or complexity finger print.
And guess what, this is something Jay Abraham has been saying for decades: short easily understood words and sentences are best.
In fact even before Jay Abraham.
The great World War II British Prime Minister Winston Churchill put it best when he said, “Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.”
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Paul Simister | Nov 6, 2007 | Reply
This is a hot topic of mine.
I just don’t understand why people want to use posh, clever sounding words that baffle the listener.
I had a client which was a flourishing virtual assistants business. When I asked them what they did I was told “digital translation”.
That didn’t connect with me but at least I was in a position to ask deeper questions rather than shrug my shoulders, mutter “that sounds interesting” and then move on to someone else.
It’s even worse when people try to write.
Life isn’t an exam where you try to show how clever you are. Instead it is about getting your message across in a way that the other person can understand and is interested enough to listen to what you have to say.
jimsym | Nov 10, 2007 | Reply
Hi Paul,
Thanks for that thought.
It’s one of my bug bears, those who use several words when one, or at a pinch two will do. People who call a spade a soil extraction instrument or a binman a domestic refuse disposal agent.
Jim