I’ve been thinking a lot about writing lately and the different styles that writers use, and how some of them make their writing so easy and smooth for us, and what I realized is that in order to make a good writing we need to have a lot of vocabulary; some words appear a lot in our essays and some words are just not enough to describe a feeling or an emotion. So just for curiosity I took out a dictionary with synonyms and tried to change some words in my essays, and it really made a difference, the sentences do not sound the same: some of them are better, some of them are worse, but you guys should try it when you revising your expose.
Just another Blogs@Baruch weblog
on May 7th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Yeah, you’re so right. A lot of times when I’m writing I take out a thesaurus, check for synonyms, find out what they mean and try them out. Two words that mean the same can make a sentence sound completely different.
on May 7th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
I like using this technique because it kind of pulls you out of a rut and makes you appreciate the subtlety of language. Two words that seem so similar can both have a totally different impact on the effect of your writing when put into context. One thing I always remember though, is that you never want your reader to feel like you had a thesaurus next to you. Don’t use words that sound totally foreign to you, because then you risk losing your voice.
on May 8th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
I agree with Tina. It’s great to put yourself out there and play around with language, I discovered a lot thanks to my thesaurus. But you do run a risk of totally missing the mark. Some words just never sound natural or add any flow to the sentences, no matter the author.