Word Choice and Voice

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.   Stephen King

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.   C.S. Lewis

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.    John Ruskin

Word choice. Which words do I choose and use? Why?

I’ve had mixed reviews from critique partners about vocabulary level in my various works. The range is from “I had to look up words. That interrupts the story. Lose the big words.” to “I love that you don’t insult my intelligence by talking down to me. Keep using vocabulary that challenges me.”

Truly, it is not that I am trying to demonstrate my facility with logo-gymnastics, but that’s the way I talk. The first word that comes to mind is what I type. I don’t sit with the thesaurus open and at the ready to insert an arcane word in place of a pedestrian one. Rather, why use a phrase when a single word would do?

Unless that language level is inconsistent with the character. Well, duh! That elusive characteristic of "voice" is, in part, signaled by word choice. Language identifies us.

When I have a character with education, why not have her use the language level she would use in real life? Oh, I know that if she sprinkles too many high-vocabulary words in, she will distract. But where is the line between voice illustrated through language level and interrupting the reader. I hate to think that readers’ vocabulary levels are so low they would avoid my great (!) books just because I have a character using less common words.

I hate to think that good vocabularies belong only to literary fiction. Genre fiction, commercial fiction—why can’t those characters be literate as well?

Okay. I do have a good vocabulary. I admit to being proud of that. But demonstrating language facility is not, should not be, tantamount to bragging or driving away readers. I remember the first time I read Sophie’s Choice (William Styron). Not only did the story fully engage me, but I had to look up a couple of words in the dictionary. Me, looking up words! I loved it!

I am a word game nut. I read the dictionary for fun. My favorite all-time Christmas present from DH was the compact version of the Oxford English Dictionary. Etymologies make me swoon. We’re always saying, “Let’s look it up.”

I LOVE WORDS! That passion showed through in my work with kids over 39 years. What a legacy to pass on, that words are cool. Why can’t I do that in my writing as well. In Streetwalker (my erotic romance), I have a character obsessed with words even though she is not educated.

So, Dear Reader, hang on for the ride. The vocabulary level in my works may be higher than some. But when I write, the right word comes to mind. I don’t go “dictionary diving” to find an obtuse way to say the same thing. If you might need a dictionary once or twice, enjoy the joy of words and the way they roll around on your tongue and in your mind.

The Making of the OED

Have you read The Professor and the Madman (Simon Winchester)? What a fabulous book. That is, if you love words and dictionaries, as I do. It’s full title, just to hook you into reading this is: The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary.

When we were culling books prior to downsizing our home, I had hard choices to make. I kept The Professor and the Madman. I may read it again. I may not. But I want to hold onto it because I loved it so much. You know that feeling. Also, I see it as a set with my OED.

I mentioned in yesterday’s blog that the compact version of the OED was my favorite Christmas present from DH. What kind of guy is that, you might ask, who gets his wife a dictionary? The same kind of guy she married when their favorite wedding present was a dictionary!

Maybe we’re weird.

Anyway, the compact OED (about 15” tall and 4” wide) has 9 pages of print on each page and comes with a magnifying glass. Friends, knowing how much I love the dictionary, gave me a fancy magnifying glass worthy of the OED. Love them both! The un-compact version, by the way, is a dictionary spanning 20 volumes.

The OED is remarkable in itself. The original dictionary defined 414,825 words. The intent was to show the development of vocabulary over time. 1,827,306 quotes were gleaned from literature by volunteers to show how the definition the words had developed over time with pejoration, amelioration, or simply multiple meanings. You can trace the etymology not just through language of origin, but the changing meanings over time. It is great fun to read!

What an accomplishment! Professor James Murray spent 40 years of his life on the project that was completed after his death. That factoid gives you a sense of the scope of this work.

The book on the making of the OED was two stories in one. Professor Murray sent out the call across England for volunteers to read literature from as far back as they could up to present day (late 19^th century) and write on slips of paper the word and a quote from a book using the word with a different definition than they had found before. All the little slips were sent to a warehouse at Oxford University where they had to be sorted and catalogued. THERE WERE NO COMPUTERS TO HELP WITH THIS! It was an astounding feat.

Just as a note of interest, do you know which English word has the largest number of definitions in the OED? “Set” has 464 definitions. Care to know the rest of the top ten? Run—396; go—368; take—343; stand—334; get—289; turn—288; put—268; fall—264; and, strike—250.

The story of the OED development was gripping enough, but we get a two-fer with the book. One of the volunteers, Dr. W.C. Minor, was especially prolific, so Murray wanted to meet him and involve him more. After being put off time and again by Minor, Murray finally showed up at his residence, an asylum for the criminally insane. With money, things could be different then as now. Minor had a suite of rooms with bookshelves everywhere loaded with rare volumes. Minor had been a surgeon during the American Civil War and that experience probably tipped the scale on sanity. He killed a man in England and was committed. But from that tragedy came the enormous help he provided on the massive OED project.

I could go on, but that would take time away from you finding this book or a copy of the OED and reading for yourself. This is a word lovers duo!

Words are the Bane of My Existence

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. Stephen King

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. C. S. Lewis

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them. John Ruskin

Word choice. Which words do I choose and use? Why?

I’ve had mixed reviews from critique partners about vocabulary level in my various works. The range is from “I had to look up words. That interrupts the story. Lose the big words.” to “I love that you don’t insult my intelligence by talking down to me. Keep using vocabulary that challenges me.”

Truly, it is not that I am trying to demonstrate my facility with logo-gymnastics, but that’s the way I talk. The first word that comes to mind is what I type. I don’t sit with the thesaurus open and at the ready to insert an arcane word in place of a pedestrian one. Rather, why use a phrase when a single word would do?

Unless that language level is inconsistent with the character. Well, duh! That elusive characteristic of "voice" is, in part, signaled by word choice. Language identifies us.

When I have a character with education, why not have her use the language level she would use in real life? Oh, I know that if she sprinkles too many high-vocabulary words in, she will distract. But where is the line between voice illustrated through language level and interrupting the reader. I hate to think that readers’ vocabulary levels are so low they would avoid my great (!) books just because I have a character using less common words.

I would also hate to think that good vocabularies belong only to literary fiction. Genre fiction, commercial fiction—why can’t those characters be literate as well?

Okay. I do have a good vocabulary. I admit to being proud of that. But demonstrating language facility is not, should not be, tantamount to bragging or driving away readers. I remember the first time I read Sophie’s Choice (William Styron). Not only did the story fully engage me, but I had to look up a couple of words in the dictionary. Me! I loved it!

I am a word game nut. I read the dictionary for fun. My favorite all-time Christmas present from DH was the compact version of the Oxford English Dictionary. Etymologies make me swoon.

I LOVE WORDS! That passion showed through in my work with kids over 39 years. What a legacy to pass on, that words are cool. Why can’t I do that in my writing as well. In my WiP, I have a character obsessed with words even though she is not educated.

So, Dear Reader, hang on for the ride. The vocabulary level in my works may be higher than some. But when I write, the right word comes to mind. I don’t go “dictionary diving” to find an obtuse way to say the same thing. If you might need a dictionary once or twice, enjoy the joy of words and the way they roll around on your tongue and mind.