Obnoxious Vocabulary

The triple/trey/deep/downtown nonsense for three-pointer is not interesting; it's catch-phrasy. I work for a product that doesn't dumb down for the readers. It's not vocabulary so much as nuanced and elevated structure and information.

 

I am cringing at what IJAG will say to me once she views this thread, since she proofread my lede comparing Dale Earnhardt's Daytona 500 near-misses to the legend of Sisyphus and the boulder.

 

Maybe some readers will have to look it up -- too bad. I wouldn't use it in a game story, but this is a column, and the author's voice is important.

We had a columnist who purposely spelled words phonetically for impact (like sez), and nobody thought Blackie Sherrod was a bad speller.

 

Personally, I stumbled more on "first halves have." That's hard to read.

 

my issue with this line of thinking is that most folks do not go to look it up. and i'd be concered that a columnist who does it too often alienates and loses readers.

listen, the vets who do this, like collier, pick their spots, i'd venture. i'll give a columnist i like on per column. but i've read several that go to the vocab well multiple times in a 20-inch piece. that just tells me the guy is looking to piss people off....

the most experienced columnists who are guilty of this aren't about to change their spots. but it's among the poor choices young writers should be taught aren't a good idea.

 

I actually used 'somnambulant ' in a column a few years ago, and ran into a guy who I'm friendly with the next day who said, a tad sheepishly, "Good column. I had to look up a couple words, but good column." I'm not a vocabulary show-off, but that was a little bit of an eye-opener. You just have to pick your spots, which can be a little tricky, but if you feel like you're going to sound self-indulgent or high-falutin', just don't do it.

Think of something else. If you're comfortable with using a word like somnambulant, you must have plenty of other simpler, more efficient tools in your toolbox that can do the same job.

 

Just a quick show of hands, how many of you could use 'somnambulent' without having to check the spelling?

[raises hand]

 

Somnambulant isn't a particularly obscure word. It's become a cliche by now. A good writer worries about how details and quotes throughout, let's say, 800 words add spice, not how five or six vocabulary geegaws might do it.

 

[raises hand]

I'm sure I did. And, 21, your spellcheck is off.

 

Oh, oh, I was so ready to throw you under the spelling bus for "geegaw", until I looked it up and saw n. var. of GEWGAW. So perhaps this post itself is a gewgaw (or geegaw), but, well, there it is.

 

SEE?? And that was after I looked it up!!

 

I can, but I've always had that kind of perspicacity.