To get them to stop using all the jargon and other writing habits we've filled their heads with - which are great for communicating with other scientists but bad for communicating with everyone else on the planet - I get them to use xkcd.com/simplewriter/@xkcd.com... 2/n

The editor limits you to the first thousand (ten hundred!) most commonly-used words in (US) English. I give them prompts for things they have to describe as a warm-up, and then they move on to describing some aspect of their research projects. It's hard, and it forces them to use simple words.