If you came across the paragraph below. What would you think of it?
When I went to the meeting, I took the leaflets that my team had prepared because I wanted to show my colleagues which flyers our team wanted to use. We had worked hard to produce pamphlets because we were aware that another organisation had used brochures very successfully. My colleagues agreed at the meeting that the booklets that my team had prepared were appropriate for our customers.
Well, we can observe that although this writer can get his ideas across, he fails in choosing the right words, in other words, Thesaurus Syndrome.
Before using ‘thesaurus words’:
– Find a sample sentence that uses the word. Compare it with your phrase/sentence. Is your usage appropriate?
– If you see a list of words in a thesaurus, pick the one with which you’re familiar… at least you can’t go wrong!
– The best way of expanding your vocabulary is by reading. I don’t just mean Nobel Prize winning novels, Shakespeare and 18th century poetry. A scathing film review can offer as much in terms of new vocab and interesting turns of phrase.
To conclude this post I will quote Stephen King: “Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”
That's food for thought, isn't it?
