Hippocrates, amongst other things, was a physician. A man credited as being the father of modern medicine and one of the first people to put forward the theory that illnesses and disease had natural causes, rather than being punishment meted out by the gods. I suspect he would also have made an extremely good copywriter, because he once said this:
“The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.”
Wise words and ones that are just as applicable today as they obviously were over two thousand years ago.
Nothing harms a piece of writing more, particularly when its intention is to sell something, than jargon and overcomplicated language. If you complicate your message and stuff it full of words people don’t know, then you make it difficult to read and difficult to understand. That is a dangerous game as the people reading it, your potential customers, don’t have to read it. If it doesn’t make sense they will quickly look for something more interesting to do.
Here is an, admittedly extreme, example of jargon and technicality ruining a sales message. It comes from an email I received a few weeks ago:
Copywriting tips: what Hippocrates can teach you about the pitfalls of jargon
