Showing off your vocabulary in articles...yay or nay?

Yeah, but why make that assumption that every one of your readers is just as well-read?

 

I don't think it's good for anybody if a writer is pausing 15 times in a 500-word story to say "Do I sound like I'm smarter than a fifth-grader? I shouldn't do that."

 

Because I'm a tough guy.

 

Of course not. That's why you shouldn't lay off the editors who keep them in check.

 

I would prefer to think my readers are well-read and not treat them otherwise... but I have also read our online comments. :

 

Yay if playing Scrabble. Nay in sports writing.

 

You should have had a pretty good idea that you're not writing for a 13th-grade level long before online comments arrived.

 

"Cognizant" is hardly a complicated word in this context. It's fairly mainstream, after all.

But obscure words and unfamiliar foreign phrases are a quick sign that a newspaper writer is showing off, not writing to his audience.

 

Don't make me pull out my sine qua non and pop you upside your vis à vis ...

 

Yo mama.

 

I always have a problem with writers who use "big" words when regular words would work just as well. Every now and then I'll come across a word or phrase that seems to come out of nowhere pop up in stories from a variety of authors and I suspect that it is part of a game writers play with each other.

 

I think people here would be surprised what is a fifth or sixth grade reading level.

https://www.lexile.com/findabook/

Lexiles are developed by Scholastic who are slowly getting a monopoly on school reading.

Check sixth grade and "what I read in school is just about right." Then choose the type of books and submit. I think you will find the results interesting.