IDEA #69
What not to write
Long words make people look less, not more, intelligent.
What you need to know
A common trait of student life is to pad out rushed essays with verbose linguistic fluff to meet a set word limit. The belief underpinning this is that longer words make the writer seem more intelligent. Winner of the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize (a parody of the Nobel Prize, specialising in rewarding humorous research), Daniel Oppenheimer of Princeton University, researched the impact of using long words where a shorter one would suffice and demonstrated that, in reality, the opposite is true.
Oppenheimer supported his hypothesis through a ...
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