thats what I mean, you should pick the word which will convery the meaning the best way, not which sounds the more technical, or uses the longest word or something.
EXACTLY, cog. How do you always manage to nail it? I think I'm understanding the advice the OP read exactly differently than the OP did. I read that as don't use too many words, don't over complicate a sentence, use the most concise words you can. Pack as much wallop into a single word as you possibly can. You need a HUGE vocabulary to do that. If you want to say someone talks a lot, but never really says anything, you might say he is garrulous. If someone talks a lot and has beautiful language and everyone pauses to listen to him, he is loquacious. These two words are synonyms, if you read their textbook definition (talkative) but are very different when you take connotation into account. So when it comes to writing with conciseness... "John was very talkative, but he never seemed to say anything" becomes "John was garrulous" The shorter your sentences are, the bigger a vocabulary you need. You have to pack as much into each word as you can, which means picking the word with the best meaning for what you're trying to get across.
The problem with the second sentence however, is that I do not understand it. Now I am basing my opinion here upon a guess, but I have a fairly wide vocabulary, and I did not understand it until you explained, and I think a lot of people would not either. Why use a word people are not going to understand??
If you have to look at a thesaurus to find a "better" word and you find one that sounds cool, don't use it. It's probably either too big or too confusing.
What I've found in what I consider well-written prose is the occasional word that's not entirely familiar to me, but placed so that it doesn't block my understanding o what I'm reading. A few months ago, I was reading a novel by Patricia Cornwell, and her character was restless, and getting up to wander and think in the middle of the night. Cornwell wrote something about Kay's partner's tolerance of her "nightly peregrinations". I wasn't familiar with the word, but the context made it clear that it had to do with her restless need to get up and do things. I liked the sound of the word and looked it up, and now it's a part of my vocabulary. I don't know if I'll ever find a place in my own writing that needs that word, but I appreciate her use of it nevertheless. She could have written "nightly wanderings" instead, but I felt like I had received a small gift. Knowing when to make the exception from the mundane is one of the things that distinguishes a great writer from a good one.
Everyone to their own. The way I see it, it depends on who your market is and the literary tradition you hail from or have developed. Your writing style depends on how varied your reading is, which, in turn, dictates how broad your vocabulary is, which, in turn, clarifies the market you target. No? Also, writing in everyday conversational style simply doesn't work in fiction. From my experience of reading and writing, dialogue has to be 'extra-ordinary', as opposed to 'ordinary'. Ordinary takes too long to move things forward, as in; characters can't afford to stand around chit-chatting until something happens. That's real life, not fiction. Same goes for 'big' or out of context words or phases. Being varied is good, but going for big just because you think it's different or might make an impression isn't better than using what you're used to, which, in the end, will elucidate exactly what you're trying to articulate, or, to put it another way - will get your message across and keep the reader you're aiming for.
Just to play devil's advocate: Then why did literary gurus like Shakespeare write in such complicated words? If I read literary pieces, I can understand little, if I don't have a dictionary with me. I am reasonably sure a lot of people won't. Why did they write such pieces?
Keep in mind that Shaakespeare's plays are written in archaic English, so the words were nowhere nearly as difficult for the audiences than as they are for modern audiences. Also, Shakespeare was master punster - his words very often were chosen for multiple meanings, both for dramatic and comic effect. Again, much of that double meaning is lost to a modern audience not familiar with the slang of Shakespeare's time.
shakespesre didn't really use complicated words, he made them up as he went along in most of the cases, and now we see them as complicated words. Shakespeare's style if you will, was to sound poetic and different, and he acheived this by making many of his lines ryhme and have rhythm, and by making up, and using more complicated words.
I think that vocabulary is important to a certain point. If someone just puts in big words with the sole purpose to sound "fancy", then I think that, as Cogito said, it comes across as arrogant. But if you want to use a huge vocabulary word to portray a particular meaning, and as long as you use it correctly in a way that the average reader would comprehend (using context clues helps), then I think that's fine. In my own writing, I try not to use too many big words, because being only thirteen years old, I might appear to be "trying too hard"...and it's fine with me to not use an excessive amount of big words, because I'm not even used to using huge vocabulary words anyways when I speak.
I am glad to hear it, and thank you. I hope we have helped somehow and it would be great to see you continuing to post. Heather
