How To Make Good Word Choices
Making good word choices is crucial to the overall quality of your writing. The right word can shed light on even the most complex concepts, while the wrong one can muddle even the simplest ideas. Here’s how you can use word choices, together with a powerful grammar software, to achieve positive results.
- Make every word relevant. Wordiness is a serious problem that plagues even the best writers. That’s why it’s important to keep a close watch for purposeless words that manage to sneak in to your writing.
- Keep modifiers to a minimum. Some writers steer clear of modifiers for their tendency to add unnecessary words into the text. Unfortunately, adjectives and adverbs do serve a very useful purpose. Instead of eschewing them, work towards minimizing use to when they’re absolutely necessary, avoiding most empty intensifiers, such as very, really and such.
- Don’t just choose a word for its literal meaning, consider factors such as sound, rhythm and mood as well.
- When choosing between words, pick out those that tend to appeal to most senses.
- Choose the action forms of verbs over noun forms and nominalizations.
- Opt for plain versions of words, avoiding more formal and obscure forms.
- Draw from a broad range of words, using synonyms and synonymous phrases to your advantage. This not only helps you be more precise, it aids in making your work more readable as well.