Synonyms, antonyms and word choice
IF YOU want to enrich your vocabulary for better writing, you have to know lots of synonyms – words that have the same meaning.
For example, “fabulous,” “wonderful” and “awesome” are all synonyms of “great.” Using synonyms is crucial if you want to sound like a native speaker when you write. You will need to use a good variety of words.
If you use the same word 100 times in one piece of writing, your readers will get bored. They will also think that you do not know much English vocabulary. If you notice you are repeating vocabulary a lot, you will need a good tool to find more options. However, you cannot keep the entire dictionary in your head.
To solve this problem, use Thesaurus, an online dictionary of synonyms and antonyms (words with opposite meanings). This one is great not only for writing, but also for effective paraphrasing, when you want to say something with different words but keep the same meaning.
Writing is a series of choices. As you work on a paper, you choose your topic,
Cabugcabug National High School, Pressident Roxas, Capiz your approach, your sources, and your thesis; when it’s time to write, you have to choose the words you will use to express your ideas and decide how you will arrange those words into sentences and paragraphs.
As you revise your draft, you make more choices. You might ask yourself, “Is this really what I mean?” or “Will readers understand this?” or “Does this sound good?”
Finding words that capture your meaning and convey that meaning to your readers is challenging. When your instructors write things like “awkward,” “vague,” or “wordy” on your draft, they are letting you know that they want you to work on word choice.
Problems with clarity are a matter of word choice such as misused words that do not actually mean what the writer thinks it does; words with unwanted connotations or meanings; using a pronoun when readers cannot tell whom/what it refers to, jargon or technical terms that make readers work unnecessarily hard, and loaded language.
Sometimes writers know what we mean by a certain word, but we have not ever spelled that out for readers. We rely too heavily on that word, perhaps repeating it often, without clarifying what we are talking about.
Sometimes the problem isn’t choosing exactly the right word to express an idea – it’s being “wordy,” or using words that your reader may regard as “extra” or inefficient. Keep an eye out for wordy constructions in your writing and see if you can replace them with more concise words or phrases.
Also, in academic writing, it is a good idea to limit your use of clichés. Clichés are catchy little phrases so frequently used that they have become trite, corny, or annoying. They are problematic because their overuse has diminished their impact and because they require several words where just one would do. The main way to avoid clichés is first to recognize them and then to create shorter, fresher equivalents. Ask yourself if there is one word that means the same thing as the cliché. ( Paid article)