It’s a Matter of Style Part 3: Vocabulary Choices

Finding your own writing style is a delicate balance. You have to consider your own preferences alongside the needs of your audience. 

One place where your style comes through is in your vocabulary choices. The individual words you use help demonstrate your own understanding of a topic as well as indicate what you expect your audience to know and understand. 

This resource will help you consider what impact your words have when you make vocabulary choices. 

Watch the Video

Practice It

The best way to explore how vocabulary changes the style is to play with it. It’s like trying on a bunch of costumes. 

Take a paragraph (from your own writing, from your favorite book, from a news article — anywhere, really!) and make it as “fancy” as you can. See how many “big” words you can use to say the same thing. Make it ridiculous. Just go completely over-the-top with it. 

Just like Activity 1 plays with language by choosing the most complex vocabulary options, you can play with language by making things as simple as possible. 

Choose a paragraph (from your own writing, a book you like, an article, etc.) and rewrite it using the simplest vocabulary you can. It will probably sound elementary and a little silly, but that’s the point. 

Seeing how much power you have over language with the choices you make helps you make those choices well later on.

Explore it Further

Want to consider the impact of vocabulary choices more? Check out these resources: 

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