I think that’s good as a rule, but I’m not sure it holds for cases like Joyce. If you want to write a book that has to do with how experience is translated into language and vice-versa, transparent language might not be best. Sometimes confusion can be a very deliberate and controlled effect, like in David Foster Wallace (who’s also on the front page today).

Just like Picasso could draw a realistic portrait when he wanted, Joyce sometimes used very simple and conservative prose. But I would agree that most people who use long words (like most people who use more than one perspective per painting) shouldn’t.

If we want to be a bit more precise with our thoughts, then we sometimes have to break out the longer words for instant clarity (given a dictionary, that is.) Technical fields need jargon in order to communicate a lot of metaphors / concepts in the least amount of paper and time as possible.

But I agree with lotusleaf1987: sometimes, I just want to yell, "JUST SPIT IT OUT IN PLAIN LANGUAGE." I think it's easy for someone to fall into the trap of getting too enthralled with the jargon and not understand the concept behind it, so they can reformulate the concept into a more understandable metaphor...

Sure. I wasn’t really thinking about technical writing. It’s good to remember that people like Einstein and Feynman could happily explain their work in very simple terms.

I completely agree, but I meant it more as an example that sometimes people can be obscure to appear intelligent when really it may just be concealing the fact that they have nothing important to say. I am not trying to slight Fitzgerald or Joyce, I like both of them as authors, but when you meet people, at say a dinner party, who try to speak similar to Joyce or Fitzgerald's style of writing, it comes off as pretentious and like it is serving some other motive--mainly that they want to say they're better than you.