One of the best pieces of advice I ever ran across was from Dwight Eisenhower who, in describing how to write effective orders in the military said, "Your goal is not to write an order that can be understood. Rather your goal is to write an order that cannot possibly be misunderstood!"
Thus short sentences, active verbs help a lot.
Problem with English is that 40% of the vocabulary is French, including most of our 'tion' words. This thanks to the results of 1066 and all that. Whereas the French language structure makes noun forms of verbs very clear and effective, English structure (which is essentially Germanic) makes a hash of it.
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