I've always written essays on ideas, but it wasn't until when I wanted to start publishing my writing on a blog that I found this idea true. Often times flowery language can sacrifice the clarity of your prose for attempting to appear more thoughtful than you are.
It's a lot like the Richard Feynman idea that if you can't distill something to a freshman lecture, you don't really understand it.[1]
[1]: Feynman, Six Not-So-Easy-Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time
Opposite to you, I'm often wary of conversational writing for exactly that reason: "Attempting to appear more thoughtful than you are". Especially a certain style of very breezy, self-assured conversational writing, that doesn't have any nuance or caveats, and hand-waves over anything too technical or specific.
Writers use that style to lay things out "like they really are". Let's boil down all this egghead complexity and get to what matters. No Harvard footnotes and overcomplicating things here, just straight talk. Malcolm Gladwell and David Brooks are effective users of that style of writing. Quite a few bloggers are, too. It produces this strange style that on the surface seems thoughtful, but doesn't really have much there.
> Let's boil down all this egghead complexity and get to what matters.
You actually be may be right - this Gladwell style of writing is usually quite dangerous, because it does give the reader the sense that they really know what they are talking about, because they are "getting to what matters" (which is obviously very subjective).
The one thing I will argue though is that simple writing communicates the author's point more effectively than using flowerly language. The writer may be wrong, but at least I have much clearer sense of what they mean. By getting to "what matters", I find it easier to determine that they have "what matters" wrong. It is easier to refute the central thesis if the argument is presented without cruft, rather than an argument where flowery prose clouds the thesis.
I find that a mix of a conversational tone followed by technical details is usually the most effective for me. It's one of the reasons I appreciate mathematics within writing - it tends to be much more clear.
Although I do think you are right about Gladwell & Co, I am refering more to MBA-speak - which tends to use large empty words to convey ideas which pretend to have more depth than they really do.
It's a lot like the Richard Feynman idea that if you can't distill something to a freshman lecture, you don't really understand it.[1]
[1]: Feynman, Six Not-So-Easy-Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time