Our craft is essentially about selecting the appropriate words and placing them in the most effective order to communicate the desired meaning/emotion. That means having a stellar vocabulary and building upon it as much as possible. Thus, my word(s) and quote(s) of the week. Hopefully, the words, their definitions and my comments help you see familiar words with a fresh perspective and learn new ones. The quotes are illustrations of well applied vocabulary, otherwise we wouldn't find the phrase quotable, right?
I challenge you to actively build your vocabulary this year. You can take several approaches:
- There are numerous books on vocabulary building. Get one and get started.
- You can simply select a word from the dictionary each day, write it down, explore its meaning and use it in a few original sentences--just like grade school; it works.
- Subscribe to a-word-a-day email list like Erin's Weird and Wonderful Word of the Day.
- Learn a foriegn language. It will broaden your vocabulary and improve your understanding of the structure and style of your native language as you learn to apply new sentence structures, composition methods and phrasing. People around the world say the same things; they just say them differently. Ah, paradox....
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