Quotidian words create rapacious effect; boring words leave no impact

by Alex Paladino

Writing is how we share our ideas, yet ideas can only travel so far on their own.  One thing often forgotten or overlooked when writing is how wording can greatly affect how people view others, and especially how teachers view students.  Far too common is the occurrence amongst writers to have rampantly incorrect grammar usage, stale vocabulary words that eliminate originality and offset tone, and an absence of flow.  No matter how great the substance, if there are no means of conveying thoughts and ideas through writing, the information is nearly useless.

Grammar is for the most part rather good for the vast majority of people; however, there are areas in which very few people know what to do correctly.  Below are a two very common niduses for errors and what should be done in their respective scenarios:

• When a clause such as “if..” or “I wish that…” occurs, the verb “to be” is not in its usual past tense of “was” for the first and third person.  “If it was different” is actually grammatically incorrect.  The conditional “if requires “was” to be changed to “were.”  Similarly, this would occur if someone were to say “I wish he was happier”; the correct form is “I wish he were happier.”
• Far more dreaded is the constantly debated who and whom.  Who is used when the person in question is doing an action.  Whom is used when the person in question is receiving an action.  Who can be replaced with he or she; whom can be replaced with him or her.  With this in mind, “He stole the wallet.” “He” works here, meaning that so can who.  “I gave it to her” “her” and not “she” fits in the sentence, so the correct usage is whom.  There are of course many finite exceptions to this rule, but this basic understanding can be far more helpful than guessing whether to use who or whom solely based on if it sounds right.

            Grammar is very important to keeping coherency and appearance, as is vocabulary.  There are over 2 million English words, yet the average person in everyday conversations and writings only uses about 3500.  Repetitious words used by everyone are bland and overstated, especially when something you’re writing may have the same points as the other 20 essays your teacher is grading, making it difficult to stand on its own.

             Words such as “interesting, good, bad, annoying, and a lot/many” are common lost opportunities to add words that help sentences come alive.  Here are some helpful words to use in their place:

                        interesting-engrossing, compelling

                        good-benign, benevolent

                        bad-malefic, baleful

                        annoying-pestersome, infuriating

                        a lot/many- an aggregate, a passel

              Additionally, there are some ‘vocab words’ that have become overused and not as effective.  words such as plethora (meaning a lot) should be avoided and replaced with another word such as aggregate or passel.  Pious (meaning very religious) could be replaced with ascetic or zealously devout.  A general rule of thumb is if you’ve seen a vocabulary word used by several people your age in a paper, you should probably find a less common synonym.

                    Grammar and vocabulary can bring a topic up from its ashes quite greatly; however, even when these skills are applied, one’s writing can still appear choppy and bland.  This may be on account of sentence structure and smoothness.  Variety and transition are crucial to many essays and stories.  

• Several long and drawn out sentences that tend to be very lengthy and not accomplish much with this added space do not help readers.  If every sentence in someone’s writing has a tendency to drift and become airy the reader will most certainly become drifty and nebulous towards the subject as reflected in the author’s presentation of words.  Short sentences can be bad as well.  They can omit facts.  Several points can be lost.  Flow is nonexistent.  Yet, a mix of the two can compliment things well.  People like diversity, even in writing.  
• Changing sentence structure to help move a point along very well.  Along with this,  transitional words hold the same degree of importance in writing.  Transitions help bring sentences together to create a uniform idea.  With this, a writer can string along facts, support, and development to aid in creating a bigger picture.
• Some lesser used transitions: in a related manner…, on the other hand…, per contra… (on the opposite side), in abridgment… (in conclusion)
• Another key thing to remember in writing, especially so in essays, is to support your topic in your introductory paragraph  by explaining how supporting facts do, in fact, support your main idea.  i.e. do not simply have a sentence after a statistic explaining how it relates to the individual body paragraph, remember to bring it back also to the thesis statement to better unify the piece as a whole.

                  While all this is true about creating more distinct and effective writing, perfection is not attainable.  imperfect grammar and the use of  “ordinary” words are bound to occur and are not necessarily a bad thing.  Even the highly reputable Harvard University makes grammar mistakes:

Notice outside a Harvard University dorm. Photo by Alex Paladino

(The correct usage is “Who are you letting into your home?” as the verb “to be” (in this case “are”) calls for “who” when the person in question is the initial subject of a sentence)

                 In short, the pursuit here is not one of perfection but one attempting to help people separate themselves, in a positive manner, from their peers when it comes to writing.