One way you can make your writing stronger is to choose a powerful, interesting word, rather than a weak or overused one. Yesterday we looked at how we can improve our writing by choosing our verbs carefully. Today we're going to see how we can use a thesaurus to find just the right adjective.
A thesaurus is a book, rather like a dictionary, which helps you find words which have similar meanings. I'm currently using the big Collins Thesaurus A-Z which has a RRP of £25, but was on sale in WH Smith recently for £6.25. Let's use it to find alternative words for strong.
Under strong, we find fifteen basic meanings listed: powerful, fit, self-confident, durable, forceful, extreme, decisive, persuasive, pungent, highly-flavoured, keen, intense, staunch, distinct, and bright. The Collins Thesaurus lists several alternative words for each of these definitions of strong, and also includes opposites for several of them.
In this posting, I'm using strong to describe writing, so the best synonym, or equivalent word, from that list of basic meanings is forceful. Its given alternatives are powerful, intense, vigorous. So instead of saying,
You can use a thesaurus to make your writing stronger.
I could write,
You can use a thesaurus to make your writing more vigorous.
But if I was describing after-shave instead of writing, I might want to use a word that is listed under the pungent option, as these are more appropriate for smells and liquids: powerful, concentrated, pure, undiluted.
If, on the other hand, I wanted to describe a person who had a strong character, I might look at the self-confident option, where I would find determined, tough, brave, aggressive, courageous, high-powered, forceful, resilient, feisty, resolute, resourceful, tenacious, plucky, hard-nosed, steadfast, unyielding, hard as nails, self-assertive, stouthearted, firm in spirit.
So you can see that by looking up just one simple word, you can find numerous others which may give you the exact nuance you are looking for. Using more telling words (another one I found in the Thesaurus) will also make your writing more engaging and memorable.
Showing posts with label vocabulary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vocabulary. Show all posts
Thursday, 25 September 2008
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
Get to Love Words - Buy a Dictionary
Do you remember a few months ago I wrote about how I'd bought a fantastic huge Thesaurus in a sale at a bargain price? Well, today I bought the dictionary to go with it. It's called Collins English Dictionary and it was on sale in WH Smith for £6.25, which is fantastic value as the original recommended price was £25. That makes a saving of 75%.
There are 1040 pages of definitions plus a further 47 pages of other information - everything from British and Canadian Prime Ministers to Member States of the EU and even several pages about music. I love it! I could sit and read it all day!
It reminds me of the time when I got my first school dictionary back in the 1960s. My primary school class had learned to read sufficiently well to be issued with a dictionary as well as a reading book.
What we were given was an etymological dictionary - one which gives the sources from which the words were derived. I loved reading about these, especially the Latin and Greek words and I was delighted when I was eventually able to learn these languages for myself.
Meanwhile, at the tender age of 6 or 7, I'd read the dictionary every night the way other kids read comics - two or three entire pages at a time! I was fascinated by all these marvellous words, and I still am to this day.
Here are some of the words I've enjoyed reading about today. Perhaps you'd like to look them up in your own dictionary or in one of the online dictionaries you can find on the internet.
mojo - zucchetto - Chiltern Hundreds - percipient - sloop - lubricious - raddled
There are 1040 pages of definitions plus a further 47 pages of other information - everything from British and Canadian Prime Ministers to Member States of the EU and even several pages about music. I love it! I could sit and read it all day!
It reminds me of the time when I got my first school dictionary back in the 1960s. My primary school class had learned to read sufficiently well to be issued with a dictionary as well as a reading book.
What we were given was an etymological dictionary - one which gives the sources from which the words were derived. I loved reading about these, especially the Latin and Greek words and I was delighted when I was eventually able to learn these languages for myself.
Meanwhile, at the tender age of 6 or 7, I'd read the dictionary every night the way other kids read comics - two or three entire pages at a time! I was fascinated by all these marvellous words, and I still am to this day.
Here are some of the words I've enjoyed reading about today. Perhaps you'd like to look them up in your own dictionary or in one of the online dictionaries you can find on the internet.
mojo - zucchetto - Chiltern Hundreds - percipient - sloop - lubricious - raddled
Saturday, 7 June 2008
Some Useful Internet Resources for Writers
Going it Alone as a Writer
One of the things I did this week was to compile a list for my students of some internet resources they might find useful for their writing. We've now had our last class of the academic year and one or two people were already wondering how they were going to survive till September without any writing classes to go to! How could they keep their writing going?
Here are some writing resources I found which I thought they might enjoy using over the summer.
Increase Your Vocabulary
Students have often said to me, 'I wish I had a bigger vocabulary, but I don't know how to go about learning new words without it taking a lot of effort.' In our lessons, there are often some words mentioned which are new to at least some of them, but I wanted to find some way they could enlarge their vocabulary at home as well.
The Word of the Day site provides readers with a new word every single day. As well as definitions, it also gives examples from literature of the words being used in context, which really help helps to bring them to life. It includes information on the foreign word the new word was originally derived from. There's also an archive of past Words of the Day - I could happily spend hours browsing through this site!
Read Poetry
There's a vast amount of poetry available on the internet, but if you don't know where to start, there's a useful website that will send you a poem every week. It's from the Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre. A few of the poems are not very easy to read unless you're very familiar with modern poetry, but there are many that will appeal to a wider readership. Again, you can lose yourself browsing through their archive of poems. I particularly liked 'In Praise of Aunts', '-wards', and 'Muriel'.
Read Writing News and Features
If you want to know about competitions and markets for your writing as well as gaining access to a large archive of articles about all aspects of writing, Writing World is a very useful website to visit. You can also sign up there to receive a regular newsletter about writing opportunities, news, and features.
Of course, there is my own daily blog, The Writing Wizard, which provides step-by-step guidance on how to write for aspiring writers and this daily blog too.
These examples are just a few of the many resources for creative writers to be found on the internet.
The Public Library
Don't just confine yourself to online sources though. Public libraries still have a lot to offer, even in this technological age. My own, moderately-sized, library provides not only novels and non-fiction, but also books on many aspects of writing, collections of short stories, and even talking books on cassette or CD. I'm always surprised at how much is available, even in these days of library funding cut-backs.
I hope you'll enjoy sampling some of these websites. Don't forget to log in tomorrow though, to read yet another of my blogs on creative writing. And please do visit The Writing Wizard too. I'd love to add a touch of magic to your writing.
One of the things I did this week was to compile a list for my students of some internet resources they might find useful for their writing. We've now had our last class of the academic year and one or two people were already wondering how they were going to survive till September without any writing classes to go to! How could they keep their writing going?
Here are some writing resources I found which I thought they might enjoy using over the summer.
Increase Your Vocabulary
Students have often said to me, 'I wish I had a bigger vocabulary, but I don't know how to go about learning new words without it taking a lot of effort.' In our lessons, there are often some words mentioned which are new to at least some of them, but I wanted to find some way they could enlarge their vocabulary at home as well.
The Word of the Day site provides readers with a new word every single day. As well as definitions, it also gives examples from literature of the words being used in context, which really help helps to bring them to life. It includes information on the foreign word the new word was originally derived from. There's also an archive of past Words of the Day - I could happily spend hours browsing through this site!
Read Poetry
There's a vast amount of poetry available on the internet, but if you don't know where to start, there's a useful website that will send you a poem every week. It's from the Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre. A few of the poems are not very easy to read unless you're very familiar with modern poetry, but there are many that will appeal to a wider readership. Again, you can lose yourself browsing through their archive of poems. I particularly liked 'In Praise of Aunts', '-wards', and 'Muriel'.
Read Writing News and Features
If you want to know about competitions and markets for your writing as well as gaining access to a large archive of articles about all aspects of writing, Writing World is a very useful website to visit. You can also sign up there to receive a regular newsletter about writing opportunities, news, and features.
Of course, there is my own daily blog, The Writing Wizard, which provides step-by-step guidance on how to write for aspiring writers and this daily blog too.
These examples are just a few of the many resources for creative writers to be found on the internet.
The Public Library
Don't just confine yourself to online sources though. Public libraries still have a lot to offer, even in this technological age. My own, moderately-sized, library provides not only novels and non-fiction, but also books on many aspects of writing, collections of short stories, and even talking books on cassette or CD. I'm always surprised at how much is available, even in these days of library funding cut-backs.
I hope you'll enjoy sampling some of these websites. Don't forget to log in tomorrow though, to read yet another of my blogs on creative writing. And please do visit The Writing Wizard too. I'd love to add a touch of magic to your writing.
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