Explaining technical things simply

Simple explanations are harder to write than complicated ones. That is the part the field tends to get backwards.

A complicated explanation lets the writer hide behind vocabulary. A simple explanation requires the writer to have understood the subject well enough to compress it without losing accuracy. Most of the work of a simple explanation is not in the writing itself; it is in the reading, thinking, and rewriting that happens before the first sentence you keep.

A few habits make simple writing more honest rather than less.

Start with what the reader already has. Good explanations build out from concepts the reader already understands, not from concepts the writer finds interesting.

Use the reader’s vocabulary wherever possible. If a specialised term is unavoidable, define it the first time it appears, in a sentence that would make sense even if the rest of the piece were missing.

Cut anything that sounds smart but is not doing work. If a sentence exists to demonstrate the writer’s sophistication rather than to move the reader’s understanding forward, it is costing the reader time and returning nothing.

Read the draft as if you did not already know what you meant. This is uncomfortable. It is also the single most useful editing move you can make.

Simple is not the same as easy, and it is not the same as dumbed-down. It is the result of doing the hard work so the reader does not have to.