Quite frankly, it depends.  It depends on your audience, the content itself, your goal, the page you are on, the type of image you want to portray, and many other aspects.  However, regardless of the answers to those questions you can never go wrong with writing in an easy to read and understand conversational manner.

We’re all familiar with the term ‘legalese’, well people use something similar online.  They write their content using big unnecessary words, long drawn out sentences, and they try to slip in sales terms and ‘wow’ terms to keep people interested.

The thing they don’t often realize is that they are doing exactly what irritates them when they visit someone else’s site.  They don’t go to
someone’s site to be ‘wowed’ they go to get specific information.

An easy way to tell if your content is overdone is to have someone read it to you aloud.  If you get bored, frustrated, want them to hurry up, or don’t understand what they are saying, then your content needs to be cleaned up.  Use every day words, use short and concise sentences. Keep things conversational.

When in doubt cut your content in half – then cut the remainder in half.  You’ll be surprised what you can easily live without.