$5 Words

[Mojave Jack]

Consider the technical writer's creed: eschew obfuscation. To communicate effectively you must tailor your language to your audience.

That is not to say, however, that you should not have expectations of your reader (or listener) to make some effort to understand, as well. Communication is a two way street, and each party should be expected to expend an equivalent effort.

Today people expect to be passive sponges, and do not expect to have to work (e.g. look up a term with they do not know) to accomplish their goals. How many people do you know that buy something, especially something technological like an iPod, and get angry that they can't figure out how to work it without having read the instructions? We move slowly and inexorably towards the lowest common denominator.

 

[Feraud]

Today people expect to be passive sponges, and do not expect to have to work (e.g. look up a term with they do not know) to accomplish their goals. How many people do you know that buy something, especially something technological like an iPod, and get angry that they can't figure out how to work it without having read the instructions? We move slowly and inexorably towards the lowest common denominator.

This is another great reason to not tailor your comments to the audience. My 12 year old son is constantly asking my wife and I what this or that means. We define the terms for him. Anything less is a disservice. The same holds true for a discussion between adults. If you do not know the meaning of a word you can look it up later.

 

[Siirous]

I suppose that I am one of the few on here that would admit to having a sub-par vocabulary. I'm a college student, but the closest I've come to studying a language is higher-level mathematics; not to mention the fact that most of my papers are laboratory writeups full of technical jargon. The need for a higher competence to create flowing graceful prose has not occured yet.

Hrm, I guess the fact that I used dictionary.com twice in this little spiel means I should get one of those elitist word-a-day calenders that I've been hearing about.

 

[Hemingway Jones]

By the way, children in an English-speaking country in Africa have a different vocabulary not only in that they're lacking inkhorn terms that might be known in intellectual circles of the American East Coast, but also because their vocabulary is richer in words originating in sundry African languages.

You missed my point entirely.

 

[Pilgrim]

I just speak and write the way I want to. If others don't understand, they can ask. When I get blank stares, I translate.

And Siirous, the way to expand your vocabulary is SO simple it's ridiculous. Read. Lots. Everything. Science fiction. History. Detective novels. Thrillers. Tom Clancy. I don't care, just READ, READ, READ.

The exposure to the way different authors use words, and their phrasing, is the single most effective way to broaden your vocabulary. The lack of reading in today's kids is also (IMNSHO) the biggest reason their vocabularies are weak.

I'm about to head out for lunch in a few minutes. I CANNOT eat by myself without a book, or wait for a plane, or spend any other amount of time without a book nearby. When I watch TV, I often do so with a book in one hand, reading during slow spots and commercials.

Just read. Find something that interests you. once you find an author you like, pop over to Amazon.com anbd stock on on him/her.

Like westerns? Louis L'Amour. Excellent wordsmith, wrote an incredible number of books. My all-time favorite historical western author is Will Henry, who wrote a number of books that are based in accurate history, but with wonderful characters woven around the facts.

Like thrillers? Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy, Dale Brown (the last two are techno-thrillers, which might appeal to you)

Science fiction: NO ONE wrote better than Robert A. Heinlein, Poul Anderson and Isaac Asimov.

Different: F. Paul Wilson writes a series of books about "Repairman Jack" which are a cross between fantasy and thriller. Check them at Amazon.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Very interesting thread!

I've been writing professionally for nearly 25 years now, and I still remember something I was told very early on by an editor I'd tried to impress with the breadth of my vocabulary.

"It's much more difficult to use simple, common words to express complex ideas than it is to wrap them up in fancy, flashy language. But the ability to express such ideas simply and clearly is what separates a good writer from a hack."

And I've tried to live by that rule ever since.

 

[Etienne]

I think it's also the reason that a lot of people SPELL so poorly. If you don't read, you don't see the words in print and you won't catch how to spell them properly. AND, if you've spent all of your life pronouncing words incorrectly, chances are good you will spell those words incorrectly, too. (Such as "prolly" instead of "probably"...)

 

[Mojave Jack]

"Language is the soul of intellect, and reading is the essential process by which that intellect is cultivated beyond the commonplace experiences of everyday life"
~ Charles Scribner, Jr.

 

[Lady Day]

My Mother was a teacher, so I lived in a "Look it up" household. We had at least 4 dictionaries dotted around our home, the table sized ones.

When Im having a dialogue with a person, I can usually tell within a few sentences if I need to slow the turbines of my brain to spit out simple colorless words or if I can keep my normal speed so to speak.

I can tell the latter if I am correcting their grammar in my head while they are chatting with me.

As for spelling, I suck. I tend to spell everything phonetically, and that gets me in tons of trouble. Thank heavens for spell check.

LD

 

[Shaul-Ike Cohen]

You missed my point entirely.

I believe not - that was just an additional remark.

 

[Senator Jack]

Posted by LizzieMaine

I've been writing professionally for nearly 25 years now, and I still remember something I was told very early on by an editor I'd tried to impress with the breadth of my vocabulary.

"It's much more difficult to use simple, common words to express complex ideas than it is to wrap them up in fancy, flashy language. But the ability to express such ideas simply and clearly is what separates a good writer from a hack."

And I've tried to live by that rule ever since.

True, but I do believe that once upon a time writers were not subjected to this sort of tomfoolery. I should think Graham Greene got to use whatever words he liked, and not just because he was Graham Greene. I believe it's only since the advent of television that writers have been ordered to dumb it down.

Asked by Jake Fink

Were you talking to a kid from Africa? Were you telling him what you would tell a kid from Africa should you ever meet one?

He was just a regular old hipster kid. In fact, butting into my conversation. He was the one to bring up Africa.

Penultimately, for now, D ) the day I dumb down my vocabulary is the day I'll wear flip-flops, and, lastly, I see no one has yet claimed the prize. (What could he mean by that? Just wait, someone will claim it.)

Regards,

Senator Jack

 

[LizzieMaine]

True, but I do believe that once upon a time writers were not subjected to this sort of tomfoolery. I should think Graham Greene got to use whatever words he liked, and not just because he was Graham Greene. I believe it's only since the advent of television that writers have been ordered to dumb it down.

Well, I don't know as I'd blame television -- I have 1930s-era textbooks on writing for radio that essentially advise the same thing: keep the writing simple, clear, and uncluttered.

Thinking about it, I find that the writers I tend to admire the most are the ones who do exactly that -- you won't find umpety-ump words in Dickens or Twain just for the sake of showing off. And Twain, especially, was a master of painting wonderfully vivid pictures for the reader in very simple earthy language. For example, I just took "Huckleberry Finn" off my shelf and opened it to a random page -- and found this:

We could hear her pounding along, but we didn’t see her good till she was close. She aimed right for us. Often they do that and try to see how close they can come without touching; sometimes the wheel bites off a sweep, and then the pilot sticks his head out and laughs, and thinks he’s mighty smart. Well, here she comes, and we said she was going to try and shave us; but she didn’t seem to be sheering off a bit. She was a big one, and she was coming in a hurry, too, looking like a black cloud with rows of glow-worms around it; but all of a sudden she bulged out, big and scary, with a long row of wide-open furnace doors shining like red-hot teeth, and her monstrous bows and guards hanging right over us. There was a yell at us, and a jingling of bells to stop the engines, a powwow of cussing, and whistling of steam—-and as Jim went overboard on one side and I on the other, she come smashing straight through the raft.


Now, there's not a single word in that paragraph that couldn't be understood by the average eighth-grader, even by today's low standards of what an eighth-grader is supposed to know. And yet it gives the reader a vivid, detailed picture of everything that's happening -- just because Twain is using simple language, it doesn't mean all he can write is "We got knocked off our raft when a steamboat ran into us." But for a truly gifted writer, those simple words are really all that's needed.

 

[The Wolf]

use the appropriate word

True, one should use an inordinate amount of big words but should use the word that most fits what is meant. Saying "callow' is sometimes the better choice of word than "new".
My boss, who was born in another country, keeps a dictionary under the counter. I've had to use it. One time I was talking with a co-worker and used the word "occluded", then I realized it might be the word, I used the dictionary and saw it was the wrong word. I told him it was wrong and rephrased what i was saying.
Yiddish words aren't considered the $5 variety but sometimes they sum up exactly what you mean.
Somewhatfftopic: , does it drive anyone else crazy that "decimate" now means to wipe out entirely?
I would rather have English remain a rich language and have to ask someone what the word means that I don't know than over simplify the language.

Sincerely,
The Wolf

 

[Senator Jack]

Ah, but here we have Twain writing in the vernacular, and my point is that writers should not be limited to writing in the vernacular. Burgess' world was full of poets and professors, and they had to speak another language.

Again, no one is going to defend the use of $5 words just to prove that one knows a $5 word, but we can defend its use in the correct context.

Let's go back to ameliorate. What would consumers think of a commercial for a sports car that urged:

Ameliorate Your Life! Accelerate Your Soul!

Okay, I'll answer that. They'd immediately look it up and begin to use it, and we'd have a perfectly good word back in the general vocabulary. I'm of the belief there really are no flashy words, just words that people don't hear enough to use.

Here are some no-so-$5 words I don't like:

Obstreperous (goes well out of its way to sound like a $5 word)
Glib (too piscine)
Couch (either as a verb or the noun)
Apartment (they used to be called flats, till a smart-alec real estate agent changed them to apartments)

Regards,

Senator Jack

 

[The Wolf]

Sen. Jack, I think you dislike for the words "glib" and "couch" might be related to recent Tom Cruise imbroglios.lol

 

[jake_fink]

Well, I don't know as I'd blame television -- I have 1930s-era textbooks on writing for radio that essentially advise the same thing: keep the writing simple, clear, and uncluttered.

Thinking about it, I find that the writers I tend to admire the most are the ones who do exactly that -- you won't find umpety-ump words in Dickens or Twain just for the sake of showing off. And Twain, especially, was a master of painting wonderfully vivid pictures for the reader in very simple earthy language. For example, I just took "Huckleberry Finn" off my shelf and opened it to a random page -- and found this:

We could hear her pounding along, but we didn’t see her good till she was close. She aimed right for us. Often they do that and try to see how close they can come without touching; sometimes the wheel bites off a sweep, and then the pilot sticks his head out and laughs, and thinks he’s mighty smart. Well, here she comes, and we said she was going to try and shave us; but she didn’t seem to be sheering off a bit. She was a big one, and she was coming in a hurry, too, looking like a black cloud with rows of glow-worms around it; but all of a sudden she bulged out, big and scary, with a long row of wide-open furnace doors shining like red-hot teeth, and her monstrous bows and guards hanging right over us. There was a yell at us, and a jingling of bells to stop the engines, a powwow of cussing, and whistling of steam—-and as Jim went overboard on one side and I on the other, she come smashing straight through the raft.


Now, there's not a single word in that paragraph that couldn't be understood by the average eighth-grader, even by today's low standards of what an eighth-grader is supposed to know. And yet it gives the reader a vivid, detailed picture of everything that's happening -- just because Twain is using simple language, it doesn't mean all he can write is "We got knocked off our raft when a steamboat ran into us." But for a truly gifted writer, those simple words are really all that's needed.

Now let me see you do the same thing with a passage from Henry James or Edgar Allen Poe or Saul Bellow. One little example from all of (American) literature is hardly the basis for a sound rule of register.

Twain is writing in the voice of a 14 year old, uneducated kid and so he uses an approximation of the language one might hear from such a character. And even if they understand the words ("sheering" is most likely outside of their lexicon), the situation, the diction and the image the passage is meant to evoke would be obscure to most average eighth graders of today, making Huckleberry Finn an "elitist" work of fiction.

Language, and its effect, is more than simply the sum of the words used, it is total, holisitic; part of that totality is register, and register is realted directly to what one knows of one's audience, or what one can reasonably expect them to know. If you are writing an instruction manual for a toaster then your writing must be clear and simple, lest crumpets be burned. Editors of magazines and newspapers know their audience well, and they know the general reading level of that audience. It makes sense to be clear and simple with little, digestible words if you are writing for a (tabloid) paper aimed at readers with, say, a grade eight or lower reading level, but if you are writing for, say, The London Times, The New York Review of Books or for a specialized publication within a particular dicipline - law, medicine, architecture, literary studies, etc. - then the register and the vocabualry changes. There is no one rule to write by, except to write as well as one can. For most writers getting the right word in cotext is vitally important, even if that word requires a few readers to go to the dictionary. Magazine and newspaper editors are trained not to know when something is well written, but to know how many column inches it will fill. I work for editors who are 20 years old and have community college certificates in editing! These are just about the last people in the world I would go to for advice on writing.

In any case, Sen. Jack's accuser is completely wrong. One has every right to use one's own vocabulary in conversation and can only be expected at best to choose words for the immediate audience, not for some hypothetical kid in/from Africa.

And if we're going to blame anyone for the rule of the lowest common denominator in writing, blame the writers of advertising copy, and for that blame Ben Franklin.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

I wish someone would pay me five dollars every time I use a fancy word!

.

 

[jake_fink]

Ah, but here we have Twain writing in the vernacular, and my point is that writers should not be limited to writing in the vernacular. Burgess' world was full of poets and professors, and they had to speak another language.

Again, no one is going to defend the use of $5 words just to prove that one knows a $5 word, but we can defend its use in the correct context.

Let's go back to ameliorate. What would consumers think of a commercial for a sports car that urged:

Ameliorate Your Life! Accelerate Your Soul!

Okay, I'll answer that. They'd immediately look it up and begin to use it, and we'd have a perfectly good word back in the general vocabulary. I'm of the belief there really are no flashy words, just words that people don't hear enough to use.

Here are some no-so-$5 words I don't like:

Obstreperous (goes well out of its way to sound like a $5 word)
Glib (too piscine)
Couch (either as a verb or the noun)
Apartment (they used to be called flats, till a smart-alec real estate agent changed them to apartments)

Regards,

Senator Jack

Every one of them are perfectly lovely wrods when used well. What is Jay Leno (apart from sorely unfunny) if not "glib"?

I only object to phonied up words meannt to sound like they cost $5 when in fact they've been built out of nickel parts (that was the sound of a metaphor stretched so far it broke ), any word that begins with "mega" for instance, as in Megacity instead of Metropolitan Toronto, or megastar to describe some celeb who has bloated beyond superstar... etc.

 

[Mojave Jack]

This debate echoes the debates between Hemingway and Faulkner. Hemingway argued for simple straightforward language and criticized Faulkner for being elitist. Personally, I wouldn't want to do without either of them! They are both masters of the written word, but in completely different styles.

Just as an aside, does anyone remember the Holyfield-Tyson fight in 1997? It was promoted by Don King, and called "The Sound and the Fury," presumably after the Faulkner novel. What King apparently did not realize is that a) the line is from MacBeth, and b) Faulkner was using it ironically. For those of you not familiar with the Sahkespeare quotation, it runs:

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

So what exactly was King trying to say by using that quotation? Clearly he just liked the sound of the words, thinking it sounded tough or dramatic or something, but in actuality he demonstrated a complete ignorance of the literature, and essentially called himself an idiot! Faulkner and Shakespeare were surely chuckling over that. Oh, what a little education can do!

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Every one of them are perfectly lovely wrods when used well.

How do we all feel about $5 typos?

.