The Power of
Words
Writing With a Purpose in Mind
Why are the words we use in
our writing important?
As we learned in our module on rhetorical appeals,
words can convey emotion and hold the power to
persuade.
What some people don’t think about, however, is
that aside from emotion, words can set the tone of
a paper and make it either formal or casual. For
academic writing, one must write formally, but not
so formal as to lose one’s audience.
Word Choice and Your Audience
Word choice must also be appropriate to the audience you are writing for.
For example, If you are trying to publish a paper in a scholarly journal, you would write more formally than
you would for a text to your friend.
If you are writing for a science journal, you might use a lot of terms and jargon that only other scientists would
understand. If you are a scientist and you are writing to an audience of non-scientists, however, you would
need to replace some of those scientific terms and jargon with words that the average person could
understand. This does not mean to use slang; it just means to write academically but not use jargon.
Cliché
We hear the term “cliché” often, but what exactly is a cliché?
A cliché is a term or phrase that is very overused. We hear them a lot from parents and grandparents because they are passed through
generations.
Examples:
“And they all lived happily ever after”
“Time flies”
“Without a care in the world”
“The calm before the storm”
They make your writing seem old-fashioned and casual. Avoid them.
Pretentious Words
(Inflated Language)Avoid them!
One mistake inexperienced writers often make is using a thesaurus to make themselves
sound smarter when they write.
The problem? They often sound less intelligent because they pick words that are so
pretentious that they contrast sharply with the rest of the writing.
For example, if I want to write about a magic tricks, I’m going to use the term “magic”
instead of “prestidigitation”. They mean the same thing, but the average person has never
even heard the term “prestidigitation”. If you have to look it up, it’s not the right word to
use.
Slang and casual language- Avoid it!
Slang or Casual term
A better choice for your writing
1. That is so cool!
2. This was a big deal during
World War II.
3. I told him to say sorry.
4. I seen what he done last week.
5. Back in the day, people were
nicer to each other.
1. That is very interesting.
2. This was an important issue
during World War II.
3. I told him to apologize.
4. I saw what he did last week.
5. Many years ago, people were
nicer to each other.
To summarize…
• Make your writing formal, but without trying
to sound too fancy. Inflated language can
make your paper worse because it points out
the weaknesses in your writing.
• Don’t use slang, clichés or jargon
• Remember your audience. If you are writing
for a general audience, keep it formal, but
don’t use language that is too inflated, too
casual, or too full of jargon.
• In your writing, you should be yourself, but
be the BEST VERSION of yourself. 