Words matter.

I don’t know if you’ve realized that, my dear inklings, but it has come to my attention a few times. Recently, I noticed this strange phenomenon when I was trying to send a message on Twitter. (For those in the know, this process is called “tweeting” — in my eyes, a particularly interesting word choice.) I was trying to tell Julie that Aaron puts a lot more faith in my artistic skills than I do. Twitter’s spellchecker, in its oh-so-helpful way, tried to correct my hastily-typed and therefore misspelled “faith” to “Gauguin.”

While I wouldn’t mind having some Gauguin native to my artistic talent, that isn’t exactly what I wanted to communicate. (Not to mention my skepticism that Aaron has the power of Gauguinic infusion.)

On Facebook, by means of the well-known “Flair” application, I discovered a series of amusing buttons which display photos of official signs. One such sign reads:

Please present your octopus.

This leads to all sorts of confusing questions. Is presenting an octopus like presenting arms? Is there a ceremonial aspect to consider? What if I don’t have an octopus to present? Or did the author of the sign mean that I should gift my octopus with something? Even if I had an octopus, what sort of gifts do octopuses like? Or is it octopi?

The implications are staggering.

Groucho Marx once said,

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read.

I would venture the claim that Mr. Marx played with the prepositions on purpose to put together this pithy pun. Sometimes, creating confusion is the whole point of a particular communication (and yes, I do realize I’m having an alliterative moment; and no, I don’t know why), as well as eliciting chuckles and eyerolls from one’s audience. Nothing wrong with that…as long as the doing of it is intentional.

Did You Really Mean To Say That?

Which brings us, naturally, to the real point of today’s article. What? No, I’m not just reciting anecdotes for your collective amusement! This is serious business, people! We’re talking about learning here!

*ahem*

We all know the shenanigans that can happen when newspapers over-edit their headlines in the interest of brevity. Students start cooking grandparents, mushrooms suddenly have gender, and cows wield axes against farmers. It’s chaos, I tell you, all because someone wanted to save space and left out a “the” here or an “an” there. When elimination, addition, or switcheroo of words isn’t intentional, it leads to a breakdown of communication — and communication, gentle readers, is what we writers are all about.

But more about that in a minute. Ready for another antidote anecdote? A couple of years ago, I was in the process of editing the first draft of my novel Triad, and I recorded the following observations:

So, I’m editing Chapter 16 of my book, and a spelling error caught my eye. This wouldn’t be such a big deal — it could just be a typo, y’know — except that I’ve observed the same error in multiple places in the manuscript. Apparently, I don’t know the difference between “rein” and “reign.”

Of the two, the one I need most in the story is “rein”–as in, the reins of horses, taking the reins, reining a horse (or a person) in, etc. What I actually used in my first draft is “reign”–as in, a monarch’s reign, the reigning ruler, etc.

Note to self: There is quite a difference between

• “I reined in the horse”

• and “I reigned in the horse.”

The latter would be, I imagine, fairly uncomfortable, not to mention a thing of impossibility in our dimension, Greeks and Trojans notwithstanding.

Shades of Mr. Marx again. My initial word choice — “reign” — changed the meaning of every sentence in which I used the word. I was expressing something I didn’t mean to express, while losing the essence of what I really wanted to say. I wasn’t communicating.

Oh, and speaking of loss, I was losing the meaning, not loosing it. In penning this article, I perused global Facebook status updates. I found people loosing friends, love, common sense, information, abilities, games, control, nothing, slippers (Et tu, Cinderella?), hair, phones, “close ones,” money, weight, sparks, minds, focus, and the ever-ephemeral “it.”

As a result of all this loosing (or loosening?), I’m picturing various denizens of the Net with somewhat manic looks on their faces, releasing handfuls of hair to the breeze or tossing their cell phones out of windows, all while shouting, “You’re free! You’re free!” Some of them, surely, are going to end up giving away or receiving things they never expected to give or get, like one Facebook user who claimed she “deserves to loose” — which brings French cities to mind.

The loosen-lose-loose(-loos?) conundrum also makes me think of their-there-they’re, your-you’re, and it’s-its. But I’m not here to give you a grammar lesson; your very own Little, Brown Handbook can do that far better than I.

Deliberate Connection

Aaron and I both have talked about this. When you write, you are negotiating a connection with your readers. You’re taking your idea, converting it into written language, and presenting it in words you want your readers to understand. If you don’t choose your words wisely, that understanding won’t take place. You won’t forge the connection between your ideas and your readers…or between your soul and your readers’. (And yes, readers and readers’ was intentional.) If you don’t connect with your readers, you might as well be talking to yourself…and sometimes, even your Self won’t have a clue what you’re trying to say.*

So pay attention to your words. I know, it seems a terribly obvious thing to say — but we writers need such reminders from time to time. Write with flair and abandon, but don’t let your words meander all willy-nilly! Deliberate over your verbs. Make each adjective deliberate. (See what I did there?) Make every word count. And please don’t forget to present your octopus.

And that’s WILAWriTWe!

(Click the Amazon link, purchase something, and contribute to the Courtney Cantrell Writerly Writership fund.)

Photo credit Julie V. Photography.

*A few weeks ago, I wrote myself a note: “The eyes are open, but the armpits are sated.”
…Huh?