Word Nerd Wednesdays

by Kristi R. Johnson

“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.” – Stephen King

Fellow word nerds, beware the thesaurus. More often than not, the word you thought of the first time is the one you are going to want to use when writing. When I turn to the thesaurus, it is usually because I want to avoid using a certain word too many times in a short amount of space. But even then, I must proceed with extreme caution.

This is really all I have for you today, as it is the day before my absolute favorite holiday of the year, so I wanted to take the time to simply say Happy Thanksgiving to all of my dear word nerds out there.

So, Happy Thanksgiving, don’t eat too much, and remember, not everyone out there loves words as much as we do. And when the eyes of your family members begin to glaze over during your rant about how ridiculous it is that the only thing that makes us pronounce ‘polish’ differently from ‘Polish’ is whether or not the ‘p’ is capitalized, it might be time to rein it in. In the words of the great Steve Martin, “Some people have a way with words, and other people…oh, uh, not have way.”