Developing your vocabulary; to use or not to use the thesaurus…

Reporter Elizabeth Lechleitner is great with words. She wasn’t a communication major in college. She was an English major … which means she’s smart. Her use of words is precise, and that precision comes from the depth of her vocabulary.

Here are some of her stories:

http://news.adventist.org/en/archive/articles/2012/01/09/reintroduced-law-again-jeopardizing-status-of-some-churches-in-hungary

http://news.adventist.org/en/archive/articles/2011/04/05/in-bermuda-adventist-ministers-to-gang-community-enlists-support-of-area-ch

http://news.adventist.org/en/archive/articles/2011/05/25/further-definition-on-tap-for-adventist-fundamental-belief-on-creation

She often uses words in her ledes that I wouldn’t have thought to use. I have searched her stories and placed at the end of this posting some examples of her well-placed words. Copy some of these onto a list, and find words in news media ledes that you like and add them to your list. Once in a while you’ll be able to employ a word from that list.

Or even better, just read a lot. That’s what Lechleitner did growing up.

In his book On Writing, author Stephen King says to throw away your thesaurus. He says if you couldn’t think of a word, then you shouldn’t use it. 

I see his point that we should develop our vocabulary naturally by reading lots of good stuff. Then again, I’ve watched an editor make magic happen with a couple of uses of a thesaurus to make a piece shine (more on this in the next posting).

So I see both sides of the [use thesaurus/don’t use thesaurus] issue. For now, here are some of Lechletiner’s great words, many of which were used in the first or second sentence of a news story. You can invoke these when helping readers understand the significance of the news you’re reporting (for more on this, see the September 6 post on Report What Happens and What It Means):

Bolstered

Spurious

Tags

Allay

Corralled

Belies

Embroiled

Would saddle

Could infringe

Swath

Tenuous

Saga