Let me digress from word usage for a moment to write about carpenters. Carpenters use hammer and saws and screw drivers.There’s a great variety of hammers, just to select one tool, that carpenters can choose from depending on the task at hand. Among the various hammers are:
- Curve Claw Hammer.
- Rip Claw Hammer.
- Framing Hammer.
- Shingler’s Hammer.
- Drywall Hammer.
- Ball Peen Hammer.
- Bricklayer’s/Tilesetter’s Hammer.
- Rubber Mallet.
There are actually more subcategories of hammer, but I’ll limit myself to these. You get the idea that one size does not fit all.
Let’s move on to word usage.
Our writing tools
In our writing craft, we memoirists use words as one of our primary tools. (Other tools are punctuation grammar, spelling [perhaps a subcategory of words rather than its own category?].) How like the carpenter with the right tool can we not be concerned with right word usage?
It stands that being able to handle words carefully, precisely and elegantly is necessary if we are to express ourselves clearly and pleasurably (for both ourselves and our readers). While nice will do when we are having a superficial conversation with a sales clerk or a chatty neighbor, it will not do when presenting the reader with a favorite aunt who may be better described as nurturing, sympathetic, understanding or encouraging.
We must hone our word usage skills.
Of course, proper word usage is not only about precise vocabulary, it is also about avoiding clichés and stereotypes, about eschewing wrong usage (myth meaning lie comes unfortunately to mind), about omitting useless reinforcers (how more unique is very unique from unique or how earlier is first met from met?)
In conclusion
In this section, the Memoir Writer’s Blog offers suggestions about how we can handle words well and become better stewards of elegant and precise word usage
A Faulty Process Is—Well—Useless
One memoir writer who had spent two or three years writing her story submitted her formatted manuscript to me for a final edit. She told me she hadn’t gotten help writing a memoir because she hadn’t wanted to be influenced. As I read her story, I struggled to find its focus. There didn’t seem to […]
Sweetheart, Are You Using Precise Words for Your Memoir?
The clearer you are in your choice of precise words, the easier it will be for your reader to understand your writing. The reader will be able to respond to you as you wish the reader to respond—instead of looking around while you are pleading “sweetheart, sweetheart.”
More on Using Precise Language
Many memoir writers are under the impression that you need to have an extensive vocabulary to write. An extensive vocabulary can only help you–if by “extensive” you mean many precise words—not just “big” ones. More important is using precise language.
Word Usage
Every once in a while, I send you some of my verbal pet peeves. Here are a few other unfortunate phrases that have come my way recently. 1. Amazon just today was offering me a “free gift.”
Watch out for Word Re-inforcers
Letting words mean what they mean… In a previous post, I wrote about using words more precisely than we often do. Specifically, I pointed out redundant usages. Today I would like to rant about a few other phrases that have come my way recently. I call them word re-inforcers. They are like redundant words but […]
Don’t De-value Your Characters by Using Cliches and Stereotypes
Don’t devalue your characters by using cliches and stereotypes. This will undermine the unique and personal feel of your memoir. Cliches and stereotypes place people in categories. As short-hand ways of writing and speaking, they reflect ready-made thoughts and adversely affect the ways we relate to our families and friends as unique individuals.
Word Lightning: the Right Word Will Dazzle Your Memoir’s Reader
Is choosing the right word really important in writing a memoir? “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” —Mark Twain Lightning dazzles the eye. The sky is split open. Sometimes it makes our hair stand on end. A lightning bug, on the […]
Five Takes for Writing with Good Grammar
Memoir writers sometimes ask, “Is writing with good grammar important?” Yes and no. To anyone beginning to write lifestories, I would caution, “Get your story down on paper and don’t worry about “good grammar”—at least, not at first.”
Redundant word usage
Redundant word usage is rampant! As a writer, I am chagrined when words get misused and one particular miscreant is redundant word usage.