WRITING LESSON: OBFUSCATION

Don't use long words where short ones will do; it makes your writing dense and difficult to understand. Words ending in -ality, -ation, -ize, -ization, -ational, and so forth are often guilty of making sentences more complex than they need to be. Ask yourself if these suffixes can be removed without damaging the sense: if you can use a shorter form, you probably should; if you can take a big scary noun and make it a punchy and powerful verb, you probably should. For instance, "The chairman brought about the organization of the conference" can stand to trade that "brought about the organization of" for "organized" — "The chairman organized the conference." Much better. (Lynch)