Back in my school days, if the teacher demanded a term paper I knew just what to do. I quickly researched the report, and wrote it as fast as I could.

Next, I reached for a thesaurus and looked up complicated, multi-syllable synonyms for my easy words. This turned my paper into a complex, obtuse mess.

That was wrong, wrong, wrong! Once I started to write for a living, I quickly discovered that if readers don