On Ten-Dollar Words

In your written compositions, it is well-founded to refrain from the utilization of immoderately substantial verbiage, lest you come across as needlessly vexatious.

Translation: Don't overuse big words.

As a writer with a somewhat decent vocabulary, I'm often tempted to show off some of the harder, more obscure words I know by just tossing them into my writing. It's an understandable desire; if you know something, you generally want to use it.

Still, the primary purpose of writing is to clearly convey information, and using those "ten-dollar" words often does just the opposite.

That's not to say you should never use words like "utilization," "immoderately" and even "Brobdingnagian." Just keep a few guidelines in mind:

• Know Your Audience. Again, your goal is to get your point across. If you're using words that your readers aren't likely to know, stop. Nobody (well, almost nobody) wants to pause in the middle of an article and click over to dictionary.com.
• Know Your Venue. Even if your readers are highly educated and have strong vocabularies, they're not looking for a challenge in their light, passive reading. Throwing more than the very occasional ten-dollar word into, say, a sports article is a great way to lose their interest.
• Use Them Judiciously. Putting a long word in a sentence has much the same effect as making it bold. When you use one or two, you'll call attention to your strongest statements. When you use the same one over and over again, you'll call attention to your word repetition instead. (That's not a good thing.)
• Use Them Sparingly. I'm repeating myself here because it's worth saying twice. If you overuse obscure words in your writing, you don't look like a writer; you look like someone who's overly fond of a thesaurus.
• Use Them Correctly. In the same vein, there are few things worse for your writing than picking a big word and using it the wrong way. Don't write "assiduous" when you mean "asinine." If you're not sure what a word means, don't use it!
• Check Your Spelling. Preferably more than once. (Do you have any idea how easy it is to misspell "Brobdingnagian?") The only thing worse than misusing a ten-dollar word is misspelling a ten-dollar word.

As with phrases like "in my opinion," advanced words are best treated like a spice on your sentences. Use them carefully, and they'll enhance the flavor. Don't expect them to replace your bread and butter.