[morley]

Your point is addressed earlier in the article:

It's not about banning new words, killing off long words or promoting completely perfect grammar. Nor is it about letting grammar slip.

A good complement to this article is Orwell's "Politics and the English Language," which talks about how people might use long, complex words (like those in the Words to Avoid list) to seem more important. That's the other side of the "variety" coin. The reality is that a skilled writer can walk that fine line, but most people are better off keeping their word choice simple and direct.

[SagelyGuru]

"It is not bout killing off long words" rings rather hollow when it is followed by a list of longer words to replace with shorter ones. It is not the fault of the innocent words that someone may have misused them to feel important.

But let us go deeper and ask: how did importance become associated with longer words? Was it perhaps because important and educated people used them, since they carried more precise and specific meanings?