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Using Appropriate Levels of Diction  - or

Word Choice Matters

category: writing

I received an SOS email from my friend Louise recently. She sent me the text of an email from a colleague in a non-profit organization. She was wondering about her colleague's use of the word tergiversate. Louise admitted that she looked up the word and still couldn't make sense of the word or its use. She asked my opinion of the message and the word choice.

I had a lot of fun playing with tergiversate. I looked it up at Merriam-Webster and from there found the top ten search results at Ask Jeeves. The best of those were the entries at Weird Words and tergiversate.com.

For the record, any word defined at a site called Weird Words is suspect as a potential weird word.

The whole episode brings up one of my soapbox topics. For E.B. White, it was rule 14, Avoid fancy words, in the chapter "An Approach to Style" from _The Elements of Style_.I call it the importance of appropriate levels of diction. That's the fancy title. The simple title is word choice matters. Many writers think ten dollar words will make them sound informed, intelligent, special. There are times when a ten dollar word is appropriate. If the ten doller word is the perfect word, better than any other word you can think of, it may be appropriate. The other test is the audience test. Is it likely that most of your audience will understand the ten dollar word? If it's the perfect word, and you believe with all your heart that most of them will know the word, then by all means use the ten dollar word.
Both the perfection test and the audience test are critical. If you are going to use a ten dollar word, it should be the best word. If a fifty cent word will do as well, it is usually better to use the fifty cent word. Many writers seem to believe that an audience will be impressed by the ten dollar word. That idea is untrue. Many in the audience won't know the ten dollar word and will be frustrated by having to try to decipher meaning in the passage without knowing the word. God forbid they should have to turn to a dictionary. A smaller group will know the word, but will also recognize the cheap ploy of using a ten dollar word when a fifty cent word would do. Using a ten doller word, unless it is absolutely the best word, is a cheap ploy.
A common byproduct of the ten dollar word problem is the misuse of words. The ten dollar word user's grasp of the ten dollar word is often problematic at best. S/he knows the denotation, the dictionary definition of the word, but is unaware of the connotations, the shades of meaning and associations of the ten dollar word.
The audience test is equally important. It's usually a good idea to use words your audience knows. If your readers have to run to the dictionary more than once, many of them are going to stop reading your epic and find something else to do. If you are writing for colleagues and higher ups on the food chain, your fancy words will offend your readers, leaving them wondering who the heck you think you are. If you are writing for a broad audience of unknowns, it is a safe assumption that some of your readers don't have great vocabularies, and, if you get too fancy, you will leave some portion of your audience behind. The writer's first job is to communicate, and you're not communicating if readers have stopped reading.

She said on 09.20.05 @ 05:07 PM CST