Why You Should Compile a Personal Dictionary
You’ll end up with a valuable writing tool.
“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”
— Faulkner (about Hemingway)“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”
— Hemingway (about Faulkner)
Using big words is not a shortcut to good writing. But being smitten with language is a way to become a better writer and storyteller. You start being mindful about the musicality of how a word sounds. Noticing common roots. Testing out playful usages. Examining sentences with a more powerful lens. Understanding something about a subculture through its jargon. Getting curious about the often-wild origins of how certain words came to mean what they do.
One easy way to start paying more attention to language is with a small action anytime a writer sends you to the dictionary, as Faulkner put it. Yes, look up the word — for instance, I recently came across scopist—so you can understand what you just read.
A scopist edits the transcripts of official proceedings, created by court reporters.
But before you go back to your book or article or story, copy and paste the word and its definition in a Word document or your Evernote or wherever it may be easy for you to…
