This post from Roy Jacobsen at Writing, Clear and Simple offers some advice derived from an unlikely source: Winnie the Pooh. Jacobsen notes that too many people try to adopt a more “elevated” form of language in their writing than they use in their everyday speech. Instead, he advises that you write more like you talk, and he offers advice for evaluating your writing in these terms. Well worth a read.
The use of plain language in writing is a recurring topic, (I recently linked to another blog post on the subject), no doubt because so many of us fail to heed advice in this area for more than a short period of time before we lapse back into bad practices. The exercise Jacobsen suggests is probably something most of us should implement as “preventive maintenance” on a regular schedule.