Precision for Writers and Editors

Precision for Writers and Editors, Autumn 2001

PRECISION for Writers and Editors

Autumn 2001

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In The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells, the Monkey-man—a monkey that Doctor Moreau had been trying to turn into a human—“was for ever jabbering … the most arrant nonsense” and “had a fantastic trick of coining new words. He had an idea … that to gabble about names that meant nothing was the proper use of speech. He called it ‘Big Thinks’ … He thought nothing of what was plain and comprehensible.”

Some writers may impress themselves by using big words they don’t understand. Utilize may sound more impressive than use (but has a specific meaning of its own). Comprise is not the same as compose; a nation-state isn’t merely a sovereign country; coalesce isn’t transitive (things coalesce, people don’t coalesce things). (See “Technically Incorrect” for a further discussion of misused words.) When you read misused big words, you can almost hear the writers asking, like the animals on Doctor Moreau’s island, “Are we not men?”

Words Into Type (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974) offers an antidote: a list of “Words Likely to Be Misused or Confused.”

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In his book Doublespeak (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), William Lutz described related kinds of Big Thinks: “gobbledygook or bureaucratese … a matter of piling on words, of overwhelming the audience” or “inflated language that is designed to make the ordinary seem extraordinary.” This is language that is meant to impress, and specifically to deceive, the reader.

Aside from writers who deceive themselves, readers are usually the victims of Big Thinks. As William Safire wrote in his book In Love With Norma Loquendi (New York: Random House, 1994), “Meanings can be assigned to words to suit the speaker, corrupting communication and derailing intelligent discourse.”

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The copyright of the article Precision for Writers and Editors in Technical Writing is owned by Steve Dunham. Permission to republish Precision for Writers and Editors in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.