Almost consistently, the first thing I’m told when any
given person critiques my work is that the vocabulary is too advanced, or that
they had to look up some of the words.
Apparently, this is a bad thing.
While it makes sense not to use advanced language in
children’s books and most young adult books, books which are aimed at high
school upperclassmen and older should be free to use whatever type of
vocabulary the author wants. Here is my
reasoning:
1. Just because a
word is uncommon doesn’t mean it should not be used.
The only way we
learn new words is by being exposed to them. By refusing to use ‘big’ words
because many people don’t know them, writers are purposefully limiting our
audiences. We are basically assuming our audience is dumb, and that is a grave
insult. Reading is supposed to expand the
mind as well as entertain; writers are in fact in the position to educate. We
should embrace this power, not fear it.
2. Sometimes the bigger, more uncommon word is the best
word.
Hemingway once famously said that you shouldn’t use
multiple words where one word will do. If a ‘big’ word replaces a concept that
takes 10 smaller words to describe, the big word is obviously superior.
3. Readers are not idiots who need to be sheltered from
the evils of big, scary vocabulary words.
People who read for entertainment are already most likely
of a higher education level. When people come across a word they don’t know
while reading, they do one of three things: look it up, guess the approximate
meaning based on context, or ignore the word.
The first two options allow you to help broaden your reader’s horizons, and
who doesn’t want to do that? The third
option isn’t bad either. People skip over stuff all the time when they read,
and usually, a handful of words they didn’t know isn’t going to prevent them
from understanding the tale at large.
4. Looking up the meanings of words is literally easier
than ever.
It used to be that if you didn’t know a word, you would
have to haul out a dictionary and leaf through the pages to find it. Nowadays,
we have dictionary apps that allow you to look up words in less than sixty
seconds, and almost everybody has a smart device with them at all times. If you
don’t have an app, there’s Dictionary.com. Nobody has an excuse anymore, and pausing your
reading to look up a word is not the end of the world. Yes, it might temporarily
‘jolt’ somebody out of the story for a minute, but if it allows them to learn
something, that’s not such a bad thing. Most people will figure it out from
context or just ignore it, so it actually doesn’t make much difference in the
long run.
5. E-Readers have changed everything.
If you have a Kindle or a Nook, all you have to do is tap
a word and the built-in dictionary tells you what it means. Let me say that
again. All you have to do is frickin’ tap the screen. It could only get easier
if you had dictionary software implanted in your brain! As more and more people are switching to eBooks, the excuses for purposefully limiting vocabulary become more and more ridiculous.
6. If somebody dislikes my writing because of my use of ‘larger’
vocabulary words, then they weren’t part of my target audience to begin with.
This is not to say that I write only for elite, erudite audiences.
I write for people who are okay with expanding their minds. Heck, My Little Pony frequently uses words
that kindergarteners wouldn’t know – like precipice, for example. If My Little Pony can do it when their
audience is little children, then certainly I can do it when my audience is
high school upperclassmen and older – or do you give more credit to little
kids than you do to adults? Entertainment can expand our minds. Why should we
try to curb that? The highest indicator of student success is teacher
expectation. I see no reason why that can’t apply to readers and writers, too.
Furthermore, using ‘big’ vocab words does not limit my
shot at becoming a successful writer. Best-selling author Stephen R. Donaldson
is notorious for his use of ‘big’ words, as well as archaic words. And, as you might guess from the fact that I
called him a best-selling author, he turned out to be a best-selling author
even though he uses ‘big’ words.
I’m not going to water down my writing. Yes, most people
don’t have higher than a sixth grade reading level. But it’s not like I hunt
through a thesaurus trying to find the biggest word for everything. Most of my
writing scores no more than a fifth grade level, according to the Flesch-Kincaid
rating system. Yes, that’s even my works that have the big, scary vocabulary
words in them!
So, no. I’m not going to cut out all the advanced
vocabulary from my work. I’m going to fearlessly continue using whatever words
I think are best for the situation, whether it’s a three year old character
saying, “Mama, bells go ‘ding, dong’!’” or a wise old Oxford professor saying
that he remembers the tintinnabulation of church bells. I don’t care if you
didn’t know the word before you read my work. I don’t care if you choose to
ignore it.
But if I both found the perfect word and helped you learn
something new, then I don’t think any writer could ask for more.
What do you think? Is using 'big' words elitist and snobbish, or is it beneficial both to the writing itself and the readers? Sound off in the comments.
