Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia

There is this legend around Ernest Hemingway that he was once asked to write a one sentence story.

The story goes something like this:

                               "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

It could have been Hemingway's. He is known to use easy-to-read language in his novels. He doesn't use too many distractions. When Hemingway describes a snowy mountain, he writes 'snowy mountain' and not 'sugar powdered land masses pushed up -over the millennia- by geological forces defined by man as plate tectonics'. This detour into geographic forces is probably fascinating but distracts from the story itself where the mountain is probably just a decor piece which plays no significant role in the story as a whole.

Stories like these 6 words leave something to the imagination and can be interpreted in many ways; from depressing sad to utterly beautiful. Every word in this sentence has its place and communicates an essential part of the story, try to leave one word out and you'll notice that the story has changed or does not make sense anymore.

By this point, you will probably ask: but @klass what has the title to do with the Hemingway story? Why are you distracting us now? Well, I have a fear for long words because they often - especially when in the hands of non-native English speakers like myself - weaken the message. We tend to use them incorrectly.

Hemingway should be an example to us, communicate your message but don't let it get tangled in a web of long words or impossible sentences.