Plain language

The goal is not simpler words. It is a reader who ends up genuinely understanding, including understanding the limits of what they now know.

Two opposite failures. Untranslated: jargon left intact, so the reader nods along and takes away nothing. Hollowed out: every precise term replaced with a vague one, leaving prose that is easy to read and impossible to act on, and worse, a reader confident about something they have misunderstood.

Simplify the language and the path, never the truth.

1. Find out what the reader already has

The single biggest determinant of a good explanation is the starting point. An executive, a junior engineer, and a customer need three different explanations of the same system, and the difference is not vocabulary — it is which questions they are asking.