Re: When the thesaurus attacks...

Subject: Re: When the thesaurus attacks...
From: "M Rassmussen" <mrassmussen -at- hotmail -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 20:11:06

Thanks for the responses. I should add that Co-Worker A and I are on very good terms, but we don't always agree with each other's editorial decisions. In this case, she thinks I'm being too nitpicky about her choice of words. (For those coming in late: "invoke" and "relocate.") I told her I'd get some feedback, and she agreed to change the words (and several other hoity-toity ones) if the majority thought it was a good idea.

My argument is that the training package's audience is skilled but not necessarily sophisticated. They're likely not people who sat through a three-hour class on SAT or GRE vocabulary, and while I'm sure they could infer the meaning of "invoke" from the sentence's context, I think it's bad style to put the user in the position of running for a dictionary.

I asked my 19-year-old cousin, who isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, if she knew what "invoke" meant, and she had no clue. If even one person isn't familiar with the word, I think it's reason enough to use a word that everyone knows (e.g., "start," "run," or "open"), if at all possible. God knows, it would be that one person not familiar with the definition who pokes out an eye and sues the company: "But I thought 'invoke' meant to stick a sharp object in my cornea."

Keep it simple, shithead. That's what my News Editing prof always said. (Imagine a West Virginia native who looks Amish and curses a blue streak.) I was a journalism major, which, quite frankly, meant I learned to write for the lowest common denominator (i.e., readers of "The NY Post"). Unless one is writing a paper on Chromatin Remodeling in Oligodendrocyte Development, I think it's fair to keep the fancy, five-syllable words to a minimum.

I guess I answered my own question, didn't I? Oops.

-Michelle

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