Using the right words

Words are our tools and, as with any tools, you need to select the right ones for the job. For me, it is best to keep it simple and effective: write what you want to say.

Don’t be tempted to use different words just for the sake of it. Sometimes it’s not necessary to find alternatives. It can make a piece read artificially, making a reader more aware of the writing than the subject.

Example comes often in the tabloid newspapers. Having used the word cake, they will use words like ’sugared sweetmeat‘. Don’t fall into the same trap - if cake is the right word, use it.

However, be careful not to overuse it. The repeated use of a single word can emphasise a point but be careful not to overuse it if that is not your intention.

These thoughts form part of a course I am teaching on the power of words, during the research for which I came across the following illuminating quotes:


Kurt Vonnegut: “The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am.

“My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers hoped that I would become understandable — and, therefore, understood.

“And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledly-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood.

“Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.

“As for your use of language, remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. ‘To be or not to be?’ asks Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favourite sentence in his short story ‘Eveline’ is just this one: ‘She was tired.’ At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do. Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. “
CS Lewis: ““Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don't say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”


Wise words.

John Dean