03/11/2022
“The English language is rich in strong and supple words. Take the time to root around and find the ones you want.”
That’s William Zinsser, from Chapter 6 of “On Writing Well.” In it, he urges writers to shun those words and phrases we read again and again, and instead choose words that deliver surprise.
He calls the pervasive, overused style to avoid “journalese,” — “it’s the death of freshness in anyone’s style.”
“It’s the common currency of newspapers and of magazines like ‘People’ — a mixture of cheap words, made-up words and clichés that have become so pervasive that a writer can hardly help using them. You must fight these phrases or you’ll sound like every hack.”
His examples:
“It’s a quilt of instant words patched together out of other parts of speech. Adjectives are used as nouns (‘greats,’ ‘notables’). Nouns are used as verbs (‘to host’), or they are chopped off to form verbs (‘enthuse,’ ‘emote’), or they are padded to form verbs (‘beef up,’ ‘put teeth into’). This is a world where eminent people are ‘famed’ and their associates are ‘staffers,’ where the future is always ‘upcoming’ and someone is forever ‘firing off’ a note.”
If you write like this, Zinsser says, readers know what to expect and glaze over. Or worse, they stop reading.
The lesson? “The race in writing is not to the swift but to the original.”
Are there overused words or phrases that make you glaze over? Post them in the comments. And let that be the last time you type them.
(H/T to Elissa Poma for introducing us to “On Writing Well.”)
