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I’m not sure I know ten thousand words in English. I somehow doubt I even know five thousand. I think my vocabulary is nearer a thousand words. If you take the words I use in a regular fashion, I will say I use maybe three hundred or so.

So, as a native speaker of English I am admitting I use somewhere around three hundred words of the language on a regular basis. Seems a bit trivial for some who uses the English language as a tool to create or edit stories. 

Words are indeed the tools of my trade. I use them to build sentences which form paragraphs which form a story. Which words I use often dictates the personality of a character. Think about it, an old man born and raised in the deep south will have an entirely different vocabulary than a young woman raised in the inner city of Chicago. In some ways they speak different languages.

Having a good vocabulary is necessary as an author and editor. What is even more of a necessity is a thesaurus. I love my thesaurus. I plug in a word and it tells me the word closest to it, the words that are opposite, those that mean the same thing, etc. What a wonderful tool for an author.

Plug in wonderful to your built-in thesaurus on your word processing program. Most of them possess such a tool. Use it. Change wonderful to one of many synonyms available. Or use the antonym if it works better. By now you know what those two words are if you write. Useful little tools too.

Use your thesaurus. Use it to find words to change and craft a story the way you want it. Take a word like horror or terror and find ways to add to them. Change them without changing the meaning to further the needs of the story.

As you use your thesaurus, your own vocabulary will grow. You will find it seeping into your everyday conversations. You will speak better and thereby write better. You will create better sentences. You will craft better stories.

Let me help you with something though. Stop trying to correct people. When a person’s vocabulary increases, they often find themselves irritated with the way others speak. They often wish to correct others. Don’t. It shows your own ignorance.

Ignorance. An interesting word often taken as an insult, but it truly isn’t. Look up the definition. Most of us are ignorant of one thing or another. To be ignorant of another’s use of our language doesn’t mean our own is perfect. 

Remember when I used the analogy about the old man and the young woman. They both speak English. They simply use it in a different manner. They say Shakespeare was the master of the language followed closely by Daniel Webster. Yet I wouldn’t be able to converse with either man.

William Shakespeare’s English is not my English. It is termed old English now. One of many earlier dialects of English changed over the years by usage of different people from different aspects of life. Shakespeare’s plays are showcased around the world in many forms and formats, but few use his original wording. Simply because no one understands it anymore. Yet it is English and so many words were created by Shakespeare we use today. He created words! Added to the vocabulary. 

How many words have been created since you were born? When I was a kid, google didn’t mean you needed to google someone. It had an entirely different meaning, yet we use the word daily in our lives now. 

I am flabbergasted at the changes in English. American English is such a hodgepodge of different words they have dictionaries out now for the changes. There is an urban dictionary, a fetish dictionary, a southern dictionary, etc. All designed to showcase the vocabulary of those dialects of English used today.

If you are a writer and you want to showcase your character’s speech to identify who they are and where they come from, think about their vocabulary. Vocabulary defines a person. It always defines a character in a story.

I’m Ross, the Editor-in-Chief of The Pyrateheart Press and I’m out.