Simple words
Should a journalist try to build a large vocabulary?
One of the things good writing instructors do is to use simple, familiar words -- words that mass audiences will understand. Does that mean all those hours spent in high school learning words like “egregious”1 were a waste of time?
As a budding professional writer, should you stop trying to learn new words? Is something like A Word A Day, a daily e-mail service about words, useless?
The answer, of course, is no. Your business is words, and you should have as many of them at your disposal as possible. No telling what you will want to say, and in what circumstances.
Still, it’s true that you should be using simple, familiar words when you are writing for a mass audience. The point is that you do want to talk to the audience in a language that they will understand. The point of your communication is its content, not the way in which it is communicated.
One of the foremost authorities on the English language in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was H. W. Fowler, an essayist and lively commentator on the English language. One of his best books is Modern English Usage, and although it was published in the 1920s, it still makes delightful reading today.
In that book Fowler distinguished between "stylish" words and "working" words. "What is to be deprecated is the notion that one can improve one’s style by using stylish words, or that important occasions necessarily demand important words," he wrote.
Fowler’s point is that words ought to work. Writers who use a word because they think it will make them sound better (and raise their status in the eye of readers) almost inevitably fail. They fail on two counts. One is that the words draw attention to themselves and away from the content. And second, they often sound foppish rather than erudite.
(Are foppish and erudite working words? Look them up.)
And what’s this A Word A Day? It’s a daily e-mail service that gives definitions of words and some etymology. Take a look, and subscribe if you like.
1egregious (i-gree-juhs, -jee-uhs) adjective: Conspicuously bad or offensive.
[From Latin egregius, outstanding : e-, ex- + grex, greg-, herd.]
Source: A Word A Day
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