Many speakers cant resist the temptation to use big words while giving a speech. Sometimes it is a conscious effort to appear to be smart, sometimes it is an unconscious impulse because thats what a speaker thinks he or she is supposed to do in a so-called formal speech.

Either way, its a bad idea.

Using big, long, or fancy words in a speech can damage you with your audience, not enhance your credibility. If you use a word that some or most members of your audience doesnt understand, you are creating a distance between you and the audience. At some level, audience members are thinking, Hey, this guy thinks hes smarter than I am. Well, well see about that!

Another danger of using big words is that you will seem insecureits as if you were trying to hard. A part of what made both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton master communicators is that they were always quick to edit out big words that a speech writer put into draft remarks. Both Presidents understood the power of simple words.

Yes, throwing big words around has helped some media figures like William F. Buckley Jr. But if your primary goal is to communicate a message (and not creating an aristocratic image for yourself), then you should stick to smaller, shorter, and simpler words.

Remember, its not about dumbing down your ideas, its about clarity.

Why use mitigate when lessen will do fine?

Why use jejune when ordinary does the trick?

Also keep this in mind,: there are many big words that people are used to reading, but arent used to hearing. So if you say them out loud, it will take people a second to remember what they mean because they hear the word so infrequently. Better to use words that most people use in every day language.

This lesson is especially important for politicians. Winston Churchill prided himself in being able to give speeches on complicated foreign policy matters while never using words with more than two syllables. He understood that the ears process information differently than the eye does, and that the shorter the word the better for all speaking situations.

So if its good enough for Churchill, then its good enough for you too.