Big Words

I've never done a blog before... it's really quite hard to get started.

In class today (MA Creative Writing), one of my classmates wrote a piece about giving evidence of a murder case in court. I raised the point that she used a lot of medical jargon but didn't isolate me, as a reader, from the piece. I made my point, and then the conversation went in a different direction, which left me thinking...
I read an article on the BBC website last week that reported that some internet company or other, has decided that there is a new word, the millionth word infact, which is (drumroll) "Web 2.0"....

right...

but that's not a word is it? "Web" is a word. It has been for quite some time, but "2.0" is numbers and a decimal point isn't it...? Anyway, the dictionary people have said that it isn't a new word (thank god!!) so i presume we're still on 999,999 words, which has been giving me panic attacks. I've got a new word. I'm trying to spread it around:

Lithaloo


It's a word my brother invented and it describes the back of your knee. I think it works.

Anyway the point i was going to make about that BBC article was this: in the article they (the dictionary people) said that a fluent English speaker knows between 20,000 and 40,000 words. Crikey. But then that got me thinking. That means that someone like me might only know 20,000, but someone like Stephen Fry might know 40,000! That's a big gap. Actually i don't even know how many words i know. That could be my PHD thesis. I'll probably find out that i only know about 2000 and then the government will decide i have to be sterilised immediately to avoid contamination of the human race.

I'm writing a dystopian novel. Can't you tell?
I've decided to go ahead and keep working on it because i've had a few encouraging words from my tutor, and she's a proper writer and everything, so my head has swollen to twice it's normal size and tomorrow i'll get back to work on in with all the enthusiasm i originally had for the project... although to be honest i probably won't even get out of my jammies.

I've gone off on a massive tangent now. My point was going to be this: i've realised that when writing, you can't keep fretting over whether the register of language you're using is going to isolate your reader and make them feel stupid. If you did that, you'd have to worry about the people who know twice as many words and how you could potentially bore them by "dumbing down" the piece. Just write what feels natural to you. If you feel uncomfortable with writing big words, don't write them, or get a dictionary out and find out what they mean. Whatever you do though don't worry too much about it, you'll only flatten the writing.

Saying that, i have just spent the last 10 minutes redrafting a blog... and i had to ask my fiance how you spell "tangent".

Oh but if you want to read the BBC article for yourself it's here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8092549.stm

feel free to vent!!!