If you've done any significant amount of reading, you'll have come across an author that tends to abuse and overuse their vocabulary. Yes, we are wordsmiths, and yes, we should have (and use) every tool at our disposal to get our message across.
The key part of that message is "to get our message across". Just because you have a weapon doesn't mean you need to fire it. Sure, I have a rather impressive vocabulary myself. I don't however, feel the need to whip it out at every party and twirl it like a baton.
We write for the masses. Most of them don't know what "contretemps" means. If you do, kudos to you, but you're not doing anyone any good by punching your reader in the face with it. All you're doing is making your audience feel dumb and jerking them out of your story so that they can go look up the damn word.
So you can use "impecunious" in a sentence. Good for you. I have a thesaurus too. Now this is not the same as "purple prose". They aren't being overly flowery in some weak attempt to sound Shakespearian. This is more like... mauve-prose. It is still succinct in its own way, it's just bulky and annoying.
Don't get me wrong; there is a time and place for these words... outside of college thesis papers. A true artist has a sense of the flow in their writing. They know how the words "feel" to the reader and they know when they'll be able to understand their meaning even if the words themselves are foreign.
The message here, I suppose, is to just be aware of who you're writing for and why. No one wants to be impressed by you, so don't try; you'll just come off as arrogant and annoying. Try only to impress yourself.
No comments:
Post a Comment