Business Success with Open Source

Eschew Obfuscation

Communication is difficult enough on its own. Why make life harder for everyone by using uncommon words where plain, straightforward ones will do? Complex linguistic constructions obscure intent and misrepresent unpretentious hypotheses as euphuistic intellections; which is to say, fancy words make it hard to communicate. It’s also a cruel thing to subject your readers to, especially if English isn’t their primary language (as is the case for many of you—hello!).

I’m a big fan of plain language, and that’s what you’ll get in this book. Sometimes sentences may sound a little old-fashioned, since ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put. Aside from that, though, I’ll do my best to use (never ...