What is your vocabulary size?

[JumpinJack]

t

I posses a rather expanded vocabulary that is often ineffectual.

Abbreviated, previously posted anecdote:

I once composed a Congressional candidate's speech for which I received accolades.... upon leaving his office, he stopped me and said (paraphrasing) "great speech, but few will understand it,
Quit writing to impress, write to be understood..... give me another speech" .... the lights came on. I closeted my vocabulary and "sloppified" my writing..... people seem to more easily understand.

I admire your succinct writing style; that now has given me pause... maybe I have become too "sloppified".

Have a great island day, amigo

Thom Paine

Having a big vocabulary is a wonderful thing. Words exist for a reason. But that's different from writing. I read once that the first rule of writing is: Know your audience. If the purpose of writing is to communicate, an author has to write to the audience in order to be understood.

God knows where I read that, but it's true, isn't it? You wouldn't write a political speech using ebonics any more than legalese, if you want the campaign speech to be understood, I guess.

 

[JumpinJack]

Your vocabulary size is:

37,000+ words

Top 99th Percentile.

29,000 – 31,500 words

96th percentile.

Shameful for an English major! (although I DID drop out)

 

[Dittohead not!]

Having a big vocabulary is a wonderful thing. Words exist for a reason. But that's different from writing. I read once that the first rule of writing is: Know your audience. If the purpose of writing is to communicate, an author has to write to the audience in order to be understood.

God knows where I read that, but it's true, isn't it? You wouldn't write a political speech using ebonics any more than legalese, if you want the campaign speech to be understood, I guess.

If you're a successful politician, you not only tailor your vocabulary to the audience, you also tailor your positions to the audience. Make them believe that you're for whatever it is they're for and against whatever they're against, and they'll vote for you.

At least that's my somewhat cynical take on political speeches.

 

[Fearandloathing]

Having a big vocabulary is a wonderful thing. Words exist for a reason. But that's different from writing. I read once that the first rule of writing is: Know your audience. If the purpose of writing is to communicate, an author has to write to the audience in order to be understood.

God knows where I read that, but it's true, isn't it? You wouldn't write a political speech using ebonics any more than legalese, if you want the campaign speech to be understood, I guess.

It's the rule of law in all writing. In TV you write to about a grade six reading comprehension level, the lowest common denominator. In print you can expand a bit in newspaper even more in science and business news, and even more in speech writing if the audience is up to it; you don't write the same stuff for a speech to students as you would to lawyers. It is called contextual perspective.

But, it is well to know as many words as possible as, because you are a communicator you will inevitably have to translate it for someone. Also, it is not the single word that confuses, as an esoteric word may be just what's needed to regain attention or meet the need of being very specific.

What NEVER to do? Use an obscure word incorrectly.

 

[Fearandloathing]

If you're a successful politician, you not only tailor your vocabulary to the audience, you also tailor your positions to the audience. Make them believe that you're for whatever it is they're for and against whatever they're against, and they'll vote for you.

At least that's my somewhat cynical take on political speeches.

Successful salespeople will do that to.....

That is why journalism dictates that you tell people what audience the speaker was addressing.......

 

[Green Balls]

Top 94th percentile

 

[JumpinJack]

If you're a successful politician, you not only tailor your vocabulary to the audience, you also tailor your positions to the audience. Make them believe that you're for whatever it is they're for and against whatever they're against, and they'll vote for you.

At least that's my somewhat cynical take on political speeches.

Well, I agree in a way. The principles are the same. A politican can't escape that, nor would he want to. BUT as to positions on particular issues, like should we reform health insurance in this way or that way, what should be done about the illegal immigration problem, etc.....their job is to make promises about particular solutions, but we all know those are just meaningless campaign promises. Well, not everyone understands that. But I pretty much do. And I'm okay with that. It's the general position on issues that counts, which is known the minute you join a particular political party, pretty much.

 

[Thom Paine]

Successful salespeople will do that to.....

That is why journalism dictates that you tell people what audience the speaker was addressing.......

Successful salesmen and journalists have a few things in common.

Wow. That brought a lightning bolt from yesteryear as a reminder of the casual disregard I've developed toward communication rules, proper punctuation; and syntax.

Who, what, when, where, why, how ...................... clear, concise, and complete (maybe more, the mind is a terrible thing.....)

I may need a refresher. Who's publishing a current worthwhile "Book of Style"? It seems the last I read, decades ago, may have been "Chicago Book of Style". I recall, after reading half of it, I arrogantly said "Aw bulls..." and tossed it in the trash. Youthful arrogance, ain't it something grand!

A quick trip in the "Wayback Machine" can be good.

Does anyone end a column with -30- anymore?

:shock:

Thom Paine

 

[Glen Contrarian]

Mine is 97th. percentile...


What Is Your Vocabulary Size? – Jebdu

Top 99th - 37K+ words. But that's not a proper test - not even close. A test that is so small is easily skewed by guesses. A proper test of vocabulary should have many more questions. What's more, there should be questions that cover the proper use of homonyms like there/they're/their and so forth. It's for that reason that I say that the test means nothing, that I could have gotten lucky, and that others who scored lower might very well have significantly larger vocabularies than my own.

 

[Glen Contrarian]

No. You are not getting whatever....nice neologism though

There is the factor of writing above your audience. That comes when you use too many extraordinarily long words together in a paragraph. The average intellect can fill in the blanks if I say, for instance, that something is "ubiquitous"...they will get a general idea of what it means by the way it's used. If though, were to say that something is a neologism, ah, that would be a challenge and even more if you were to say that something is an "ubiquitous neologism"...which by the way would be the overuse of a newly coined word.

The need to have an expanding vocabulary has at least two reasons, one, crosswords, which are a GOD GIVEN RIGHT. Two, if you know the meaning well, and the reading comprehension level of your audience then you know what not to use, which is far more important.

Sometimes, around really smart people, I like to invent words that sound real to see if they catch on. 80% of the time no one even asks.

Why am I not surprised you have written for publication?

I remember one time I entered a fairly well-known poetry contest, and one of the comments that I received was that I should not have used the word "demur" - not because it didn't fit, but because (they said) most of my audience would not understand what it meant. I haven't submitted to that particular contest since.

I don't mind having to "dumb things down" for the appropriate audience, but that comment just left a bad taste in my mouth....

 

[Fearandloathing]

Successful salesmen and journalists have a few things in common.

Wow. That brought a lightning bolt from yesteryear as a reminder of the casual disregard I've developed toward communication rules, proper punctuation; and syntax.

Who, what, when, where, why, how ...................... clear, concise, and complete (maybe more, the mind is a terrible thing.....)

I may need a refresher. Who's publishing a current worthwhile "Book of Style"? It seems the last I read, decades ago, may have been "Chicago Book of Style". I recall, after reading half of it, I arrogantly said "Aw bulls..." and tossed it in the trash. Youthful arrogance, ain't it something grand!

A quick trip in the "Wayback Machine" can be good.

Does anyone end a column with -30- anymore?

:shock:

Thom Paine

I do.

That was a secret cool of mine when I first went to intern for the Kitchener-Waterloo Record. I used to -30- my posts but no one ever noticed.

"Style" has become a fools game, new rules, new inventions, in tv the 5 W's have become "Why,why,why,why,why", analysis precedes the event and follows immediately after, and no one notices the two analyses were a parsec or two off. We never get the news, but the re-action...two minutes on the story and 20 on talking heads telling us what it means as pressed through their sieve.

I have loved my copy of Fowler's Rules of English Usage, mine is falling apart juts like my unabridged Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and my full sized Roget's. The on line stuff is junk.

The clear, and complete rule is there, but vague and gossamer [my new word for today] on the "concise"....I read something by Glenn Beck that took four chapters to tell me what could have been covered in a paragraph. The electronic has made everyone a "writer" and the celebrity age has made too many people an author. I have begun reading, after 55 years, The Adventure's of Tom Sawyer. All you need is a half an hour with Sam Clements to see what real writing is. In five sentences you know enough about how aunt Polly does things to know there's some fun coming there and I haven't even got to the whitewashed fence yet.

 

[Fearandloathing]

I remember one time I entered a fairly well-known poetry contest, and one of the comments that I received was that I should not have used the word "demur" - not because it didn't fit, but because (they said) most of my audience would not understand what it meant. I haven't submitted to that particular contest since.

I don't mind having to "dumb things down" for the appropriate audience, but that comment just left a bad taste in my mouth....

Demur? ow old was the audience, five?

Girls learn not only demur but how to be it at four months!

I have never been able to write a lick of poetry since I was a virgin teen ager...don't know if there's a connection. I just don't "get" poetry, even some songs from the 60's I only figured out a while ago...but then that was the 60's

 

[Lutherf]

94th.

Still no idea what a fonqa is.

 

[LadyMoonlight]

29,000 – 31,500 words

96th percentile.

Shameful for an English major! (although I DID drop out)

History major, with a bit of English. I much prefer to teach History than English.

 

[nota bene]

Demur? ow old was the audience, five?

Girls learn not only demur but how to be it at four months!

I have never been able to write a lick of poetry since I was a virgin teen ager...don't know if there's a connection. I just don't "get" poetry, even some songs from the 60's I only figured out a while ago...but then that was the 60's

But what's great is that you understand the connection between poems and lyrics.

 

[Glen Contrarian]

Demur? ow old was the audience, five?

Girls learn not only demur but how to be it at four months!

I have never been able to write a lick of poetry since I was a virgin teen ager...don't know if there's a connection. I just don't "get" poetry, even some songs from the 60's I only figured out a while ago...but then that was the 60's

I never expected to like to write poetry - I'd never much liked it except for a few of the classics like "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and such. Like you, I didn't much see the point. Funny thing is, the first time was when I took my oldest son to the airport for the day he was moving away (for the first time - long story:roll. I was bawling like an idiot. When I got back to the hotel room, all I could think of is to write a poem...and that's what helped me make it through that day. It was the strangest feeling. I still don't understand why I thought of it in the first place, but I think I can understand a little bit of what must be going on in the minds of the real poets, though I'm surely not one of them....

 

[Fearandloathing]

But what's great is that you understand the connection between poems and lyrics.

Of course. You can't grow up with the Mamas and Papas and songs like Crique Alley, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, The Beatles and the Doors without getting a connection. m It is when the lyrics appear without music, I go "huh"?

 

[Fearandloathing]

I never expected to like to write poetry - I'd never much liked it except for a few of the classics like "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and such. Like you, I didn't much see the point. Funny thing is, the first time was when I took my oldest son to the airport for the day he was moving away (for the first time - long story:roll. I was bawling like an idiot. When I got back to the hotel room, all I could think of is to write a poem...and that's what helped me make it through that day. It was the strangest feeling. I still don't understand why I thought of it in the first place, but I think I can understand a little bit of what must be going on in the minds of the real poets, though I'm surely not one of them....

Hmmm...


Truth be known I have written some lyrics for songs, country and western which I am not drawn to, but I wouldn't call it poetry, it had no great emotion for me, in fact it was rather mathematical. One, "Nine Pound Sledge" had a total of about 40 different words in all.

 

[Glen Contrarian]

Hmmm...


Truth be known I have written some lyrics for songs, country and western which I am not drawn to, but I wouldn't call it poetry, it had no great emotion for me, in fact it was rather mathematical. One, "Nine Pound Sledge" had a total of about 40 different words in all.

Poetry is a bit like programming: it's not the length of the script, but the effectiveness of the script that is used. A 20-line script may be much more effective than a 2000-line script.

Looking at it another way, Japanese haiku contain no more (and no less) than seventeen syllables, yet they are certainly poetry. And one of my favorite songs, "Colour My World" by Chicago, has precisely forty words.

It all goes to show that at least when it comes to art, size really doesn't matter.

 

[Fearandloathing]

Poetry is a bit like programming: it's not the length of the script, but the effectiveness of the script that is used. A 20-line script may be much more effective than a 2000-line script.

Looking at it another way, Japanese haiku contain no more (and no less) than seventeen syllables, yet they are certainly poetry. And one of my favorite songs, "Colour My World" by Chicago, has precisely forty words.

It all goes to show that at least when it comes to art, size really doesn't matter.

Those are good points, and I agree that a verse of a song can carry many levels of meaning, images: "nobody's right is everybody's" wrong is a logical nightmare in four words, but along with "there's a man with a gun over there" becomes a virtual movie.

I guess it doesn't appeal to me because it seems like a science experiment; I get my mojo from the essay or story. When I can lay down 2,000 words, edit it to 1,200 and tell the same more colorfully, I get happy.

Oddly, with billions of words having been written from high school, daily newspaper,to hourly newscasts, to television and back to print and magazine, I have never in my life ever written on thing I was totally satisfied with; everything becomes a deadline compromise. I think I like the deadline rush, I once waited till the night before to write a 2,500 piece on sore front legal aid. It turned out to be one of my better works, even though it took me all night and several urns of coffee

 

[Glen Contrarian]

Those are good points, and I agree that a verse of a song can carry many levels of meaning, images: "nobody's right is everybody's" wrong is a logical nightmare in four words, but along with "there's a man with a gun over there" becomes a virtual movie.

I guess it doesn't appeal to me because it seems like a science experiment; I get my mojo from the essay or story. When I can lay down 2,000 words, edit it to 1,200 and tell the same more colorfully, I get happy.

Oddly, with billions of words having been written from high school, daily newspaper,to hourly newscasts, to television and back to print and magazine, I have never in my life ever written on thing I was totally satisfied with; everything becomes a deadline compromise. I think I like the deadline rush, I once waited till the night before to write a 2,500 piece on sore front legal aid. It turned out to be one of my better works, even though it took me all night and several urns of coffee

"For What It's Worth" - the prototypical antiwar protest song, the standard by which all other such songs are judged...and every bit as relevant when we were invading Iraq as it was in the Vietnam era.

And I know what you mean by the deadline rush. Reminds me of something Leonard Bernstein wrote: “To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.” And maybe add "not quite enough money", too.

 

[Fearandloathing]

"For What It's Worth" - the prototypical antiwar protest song, the standard by which all other such songs are judged...and every bit as relevant when we were invading Iraq as it was in the Vietnam era.

And I know what you mean by the deadline rush. Reminds me of something Leonard Bernstein wrote: “To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.” And maybe add "not quite enough money", too.

ah yes, and For What it's Worth along with the Jazz classic Compared to What, were the mainstays of my musical experience in those days. I had this Sony portable cassette I would mount on the handlebars of my BSA, and the only tape I had was selections from Buffalo Springfield, this crazy 78 version of House of the Rising Sun with the Animals version right after, Jefferson Airplane, etc. blaring full blast, over ad over, everywhere I went.

In journalism, there is "too much time". I was once given a month off to research a five part special on housing, just housing, no given focus. I spent three weeks of that month stoned out of my mind.

 

[NoC_T]

Mine is 97th. percentile...


What Is Your Vocabulary Size? – Jebdu

It was enlivening, vocab is omethi9ng you sweat for your Masters. They insist that you prac tice. Of couse ryou do, your parents pay so much money. Ultimately,there's no recompense if whatever vocationsal direction became you couldn't quite measure up to youer expectations.you'll be the only one thyat knows, apart from God and He doesn't interfere.

 

[Glen Contrarian]

ah yes, and For What it's Worth along with the Jazz classic Compared to What, were the mainstays of my musical experience in those days. I had this Sony portable cassette I would mount on the handlebars of my BSA, and the only tape I had was selections from Buffalo Springfield, this crazy 78 version of House of the Rising Sun with the Animals version right after, Jefferson Airplane, etc. blaring full blast, over ad over, everywhere I went.

In journalism, there is "too much time". I was once given a month off to research a five part special on housing, just housing, no given focus. I spent three weeks of that month stoned out of my mind.

And I just spent the last half minute chuckling like an idiot. I really do feel sorry for the kids nowadays, since they are missing out. It's just not the same when the first time you hear them is as Muzak in Wal-Mart, Safeway, or in the occasional elevator.... I honestly believe that in the centuries after you and I are long dead, the music of the sixties and seventies (and to a much lesser extent, the eighties) will be seen as every bit as classic - and infinitely more socially-influential - as anything by Mozart or Beethoven.

 

[Fearandloathing]

And I just spent the last half minute chuckling like an idiot. I really do feel sorry for the kids nowadays, since they are missing out. It's just not the same when the first time you hear them is as Muzak in Wal-Mart, Safeway, or in the occasional elevator.... I honestly believe that in the centuries after you and I are long dead, the music of the sixties and seventies (and to a much lesser extent, the eighties) will be seen as every bit as classic - and infinitely more socially-influential - as anything by Mozart or Beethoven.

Oh man, talk about the underground music movement.
Surealistic Pillow was banned from air play and our high school adopted this policy of no "non-educational" records in school, which meant no Rock and roll. So we traded from brown paper bags, or putting Jefferson airplane and Janis Joplin in classical covers. We learned about new releases by hanging out in record stores where you could go in a booth and try it out. The draft card burners were the best source for where to go for the hard core stuff, that's how we learned about the Doors, Light My Fire was a 2:48 cut down version of the original that made no sense until we heard it in context of the album.
Literature too. The underground press, mostly political, was also big on new music, they were what became Rolling Stone magazine; they had some of the best writing I ever read, where I discovered Hunter S. Thompson.
I feel sorry for kids today too. Here in the city I see bus loads of teens all sitting alone staring into a 3" screen. Then, and am I ever sounding like my dad, we would go to each others homes and listen to the new music, and whatever came out of that.
We read less and less as a society, and we enjoy it less. I still remember a friend calling me and reading a line from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas "Spiro Agnew was right, the press is a bunch of **** offs and misfits masturbating their guts into the gutter of life"....it took a good twenty minutes to get through as we couldn't stop laughing. Today that's "offensive to an identifiable group" or some ****, when really it is the ugly truth - the media are ghouls feeding off misfortune and war. But then we watch it.