The Tools of Clarity: Analogies, Concreteness and the Hunt for Jargon
Once the message is structured, it still has to be made tangible. Three families of tools turn the abstract into the obvious: analogies, concrete examples, and the removal of everything that needlessly weighs things down.
The analogy: linking the unknown to the known
To explain is almost always to link a new idea to something the other person already knows. That is the role of the analogy. Psychologist Dedre Gentner described this mechanism with her structure-mapping theory (1983): a good analogy does not transfer surface details, but the structure of relations. Comparing electric current to water flowing through a pipe works because the relation (pressure → flow) maps over (voltage → current), not because water resembles electrons.
A successful analogy makes the listener say: "Ah, it's like…!" — the moment when the unknown finds a place in the already-known.
Mind the limits: every analogy eventually "breaks." Specify where it stops ("the pipe image works for flow, but not for the speed of propagation"), otherwise you install a false mental model.
Concrete beats abstract
In Made to Stick (2007), Chip and Dan Heath propose the acronym SUCCESs for ideas that "stick": Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories. Concreteness plays a central role: the brain retains a precise image far better than an abstract notion.
| Abstract (forgettable) | Concrete (memorable) |
|---|---|
| "Our solution improves productivity" | "Your reps save 40 minutes a day — a whole morning per week" |
| "A great distance" | "The equivalent of three football fields" |
| "A microprocessor handles many operations" | "If it counted one operation per second, a day of computing would take it 30,000 years" |
Simple rule: to every abstract idea, attach an example, a vivid number or an image.
The hunt for jargon and clutter
Journalist William Zinsser, in On Writing Well, sums up the fight: "Clutter is the disease of American writing." Every useless word, every undefined acronym, every learned turn of phrase is a toll you make the listener pay.
This echoes the plain language movement, written into US law by the Plain Writing Act of 2010, which requires agencies to write understandably. Three reflexes: prefer the common word to the technical one, the short sentence to stacked clauses, the action verb to the nominalization ("decide" rather than "carry out a decision-making process").
The Feynman technique: the ultimate test
Popularized under the name of physicist Richard Feynman, this method has four steps: (1) choose a concept; (2) explain it as if to a child or a total beginner, with no jargon; (3) spot the places where you get stuck or fall back into jargon — those are precisely your gaps in understanding; (4) go back to the source, then simplify again. Clarity for others is also the best test of your own understanding: you can only popularize what you truly master.
Say this / don't say that
- Don't say: "The protocol implements an asymmetric handshake for session negotiation." (stacked jargon)
- Say: "Before talking, the two machines exchange a secret password — a bit like two spies checking each other's identity." (common words + analogy)
Practical exercise
Take a technical paragraph you have written. First pass: replace each trade term with an everyday word. Second pass: add one analogy. Third pass: cut 20% of the words without losing meaning. Compare the before/after out loud.
Summary
Three levers make an idea clear. The analogy links the unknown to the known by transferring the structure of relations (Gentner) — provided you flag its limits. The concrete (vivid numbers, images, examples) always beats the abstract, as the SUCCESs model of the Heath brothers reminds us. Finally, the hunt for jargon and clutter (Zinsser, the plain language movement) and the Feynman technique — explaining as if to a beginner to reveal your own gaps — complete the transformation of the complicated into the obvious.