Using the simplest language possible

Use the simplest possible language. Above all, remember how it was before you yourself grasped whatever it is you’re explaining. —Carl Sagan

Do you remember?

I rarely do, and it’s often one of the biggest problems I face in writing. What Sagan observes here is essentially the practice of empathy for our reader in writing. We struggle to “remember how it was before [we ourselves] grasped whatever it is.” Always clever, Sagan frames this not as a problem of the present—as a writer struggling with a reader. Instead, he leverages our own innate self-centeredness; he asks us to empathize with ourselves, our past selves who didn’t yet understand something.

But this advice applies to more than writing. Watch any old Cosmos clip and you’ll see that this advice is at the heart of what it means to be a great teacher. When Sagan explains something in Cosmos, he has no interest in jargon. He is laser-focused on explaining the very basic kernel of an idea or a concept. The best teachers manage to do this: to remember the not-knowingness that lies across the way from understanding and have the skill (and self-knowledge) to build a bridge backwards to help the rest of us.