Erasing the Dictionary

As a child, I remember reading through the dictionary and delighting in discovering new words that appealed to me. Some, I fancied for the way they sound when spoken, like atelectasis (the collapse of a lung). Others found their way into my writing and vocabulary because of their definition, like Junoesque (marked by stately beauty). Words have a special place in the heart of writers.

This morning, I happened upon a blog post over at CopyWriterUnderground.com that tells a woeful tale of words in danger of deletion from the dictionary. It seems that once a word is deemed archaic, it is deleted from the next edition of the dictionary, never to see the light of day again. While this practice seems unnatural and more a than a little sadistic, it continues year after year with dozens of words withering away to oblivion at the hands of a team of heartless dictionary editors suffering from caffeine withdrawal and hemorrhoids.

Tom’s post is based on an article in the New York Times that allows readers to vote for their favorite delightful words in danger of extinction. As a preview of some of the worthy words facing the axe, we’ve decided to reprint a portion of the list here.

• Abstergent: Cleansing or scouring
• Agrestic: Rural; rustic; unpolished; uncouth
• Apodeictic: Unquestionably true by virtue of demonstration
• Caducity: Perishableness; senility
• Caliginosity: Dimness; darkness
• Compossible: Possible in coexistence with something else
• Embrangle: To confuse or entangle
• Exuviate :To shed (a skin or similar outer covering)
• Fatidical Prophetic
• Fubsy: Short and stout; squat
• Griseous: Streaked or mixed with grey; somewhat grey
• Malison: A curse
• Mansuetude: Gentleness or mildness
• Muliebrity: The condition of being a woman
• Niddering: Cowardly
• Nitid: Bright; glistening
• Olid: Foul-smelling
• Oppugnant: Combative, antagonistic or contrary
• Recrement: Waste matter; refuse; dross
• Roborant: Tending to fortify or increase strength
• Skirr: A whirring or grating sound, as of the wings of birds in flight
• Vilipend: To treat or regard with contempt

If you see a word or two you like, head over to the NYT website and give it a vote. Tom also encourages bloggers to use a few of these unusual gems in their posts and copywriting to help save these words from extinction and slow down this olid practice of word executions, which we think is an excellent idea! No word deserves to be thrown out like literary recrement! Thanks for sharing Tom.

By the way, how many of these obscure words can you use in a sentence?

Big is Beautiful!

“Big is Beautiful!” may work for plus-sized underwear ads, but it fails miserably in the world of online writing. Clear, concise writing is best. You have 500 words or less to take your reader on a journey with a destination of your choosing.

The Challenge

Your goal is to transport readers from point A to point B in a manner that inspires them to continue following your lead.  Most readers aren’t that picky, they’ll follow nearly anyone that piques their interest for a short time; the challenge is to keep their interest.

Step Three: Cutting the Fat

Cutting the fat is a painful process for many writers. Laboring over a creation only to trash your beloved words in a pile on the floor is unnatural. However, the trimmed up product is often a creation more beautiful and valuable than the first draft.

The Trimming Process

Cutting the fact begins with eliminating or revising any confusion in your writing.

• Take out any parts that do not move the reader toward the destination. If it is not related to your topic, get rid of it.
• Organize your thoughts to create a logical flow. (We mentioned these first two steps in Focus and Keep it Flowing.)
• Break up long paragraphs into smaller chunks of related information. This creates a little more white space and is easier on the eyes. It also allows readers to scan for information quickly before they decide to invest the time it takes to read an entire post.
• Replace flowery prose with powerful descriptions. Long-winded descriptions are nice for poetry and story telling, but are not a good fit for most online content.

Step Four: Choosing Words Carefully

If you are a writer, you already know that word choice can make all the difference. All writers have a love for words, and sometimes we have a difficult time choosing which words to romance for a post. One way to select the right words for a post begins with determining your tone for the piece. Let’s say you are writing a sample blog post for a website that sells lightning rods. What emotions underlie your post on lightning storms? Are you conveying wonder, fear, fascination, or fast and hard clinical facts?

Once you identify the tone of your writing, brainstorm words that express your thoughts and evoke the emotions behind your tone. For example, words such as sizzling, singeing, ear-splitting, ground shaking, hair raising, and white hot invoke images of a lightening storm that convey power and fascination. In contrast, charring, electrified, scorched, random, split-second, and life threatening convey an attitude of fear.

Once you have a word bank to draw from, you can replace dull or incongruent words with selections from your brainstorming list.

Focus, flow, and lean writing are essential elements of clearer writing.  Next up in the Clearer Writing series: Originality. Stay tuned to learn how marching to the beat of a different drummer can be a good thing.