There’s no sense in writing down to the level of the readers you think are out there. Half the time they aren’t really there, and the rest of the time, they’re not interested in a watered-down version of the real product. Even if you succeed, all that you achieve is that now a bunch of morons don’t understand the subject and think that you agree with them.

It’s much better to write the piece that you want to read yourself, which usually means pitching the technical content at a level slightly higher than you were comfortable with when you started thinking about it. That doesn’t mean using jargon or writing dull sentences, but it does mean refusing to dumb down, and it definitely means keeping all the complexity in the article which you were able to wrap your own head around.

-- Dan Davies