Word Choice

Downloadable version (Microsoft Word document)

Consider the following examples:

1.  Miss Watson told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn't so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn't any good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but some how I couldn't make it work.

2.  Miss Watson advised me concerning the efficacy of prayer; however, my numerous attempts at communion yielded only a small length of fishing line which proved useless since it lacked hooks. I continued supplicating the Lord for hooks, but my pleas availed nothing.

Which is the character from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn? The differences in word choice in these passages are obvious.

Word choice can help portray many types of people—humble or cocky, intelligent or dim-witted, fun-loving or boring. In school papers, word choice can also show whether you really know what you're talking about or whether you are simply trying to hide a poor idea behind inflated diction—or “high flown words,” to use colloquial language.

Depending on the type of audience you're addressing and the image you want to present, you can use different words to say the same thing. Consider these words:

FORMAL insupportable preposterous ludicrous

INFORMAL bull silly looney

You can see that all of these words have the same basic meaning, but they range from very formal to downright slang.

Levels of Diction

There are basically four levels of diction:

Formal: highly educated audience: ceremonial or scholarly purposes

Standard: well-educated audience: college papers, mass publications, business communication, and many other writing purposes

Informal: a general audience: spoken rather than written situations, personal letters, conversational and entertaining purposes

Slang: a specific audience: often used to give a certain "flavor" as in sportscasting or novels, or to build connections between members of a group or generation

Choosing a Level of Diction

So, why would you choose one word instead of another? Always remember two guidelines: Audience and Purpose.

First, decide who you're writing to. In academic writing, the basic guideline is to assume that you're writing to your professor. However, as soon as students hear that their audience is their professor, students assume they should use the most formal word possible: multisyllabic, Latin-based, noun form. However, most professors pre­fer writing that uses the most appropriate word—words which convey meaning, not pretentions.

Second, determine your purpose. Some possible purposes may be to inform, to persuade, to illustrate, to analyze, or to entertain. However, there is one unspoken purpose in all college writing: To demonstrate how well you think and how well you understand the material. Whatever your other purposes may be, if your audience is your professor, your purpose should be to show clear, logical thinking, not just "a good idea." It must be a well-expressed and well-analyzed "good idea."

Note: See also the handout on audience.

Revised by K. L. Soper, Jan. 1993
Revised, March 2000