Spare me the Headache

After reading a translation of Derrida's "Plato's Pharmacy" I found myself squinting my eyes and rubbing my temples. Derrida had given me a headache, and not because the topic was boring, or because I was being forced to read it for literary theory class; no these things were not the cause of the pounding in my brain. It was the words. I could barely go six words without having to look up a definition on dictionary.com, and it was tiring. Now, while I admire Derrida's sophistication, and understand why he needed to use this painstaking jargon, I do not understand why some of the blogs I've encountered feel the need to create a post, which contains at least twenty SAT vocabulary terms. I believe writing to be most effective when it isn’t padded with gaudy language. Let’s say you’re writing about socks, and hey that's great. I know you may feel compelled to tell me there is an aperture in the sock, but what’s so wrong with the word hole? It’s direct, and it gives me an automatic image of a holey sock in my mind. The use of aperture here simply makes me think that you are trying to sound smart, and that perhaps you are using big words as a crutch for weak argumentation and/or writing. I’m not suggesting that people “dumb down” their writing, but please next time you feel compelled to use the word of the day, spare us and put it in your dissertation.