When I was in high school we had a trend where anytime someone used a word of more than three syllables they'd get punched in the arm for the number of syllables.  This was a physical manifestation of the general social pressure prevalent in high schools to not stick out.  I learned to dumb myself down a little to get by. At my first job I started to notice I had trouble being interrupted and talked over.  The problem continued until I was thrust into a sink or swim environment in the financial services industry where my livelihood depended on effective communication. I had the opportunity to ask my company's chief economist how to effectively communicate in an international but technical setting.  At times I'd continued to dumb down my English for the sake non-native speakers but found myself getting interrupted again.  He offered readability scores as a way to practice the right balance. [Code here] I fiddled with them a bit and noticed tha...