Writing Vocabulary: Why It Matters and Strategies to Expand Yours

Vocabulary (noun): the body of words someone knows and uses in their writing and speech

Compare the following sentences:

Sentence one: The man felt sick when he woke up, so he walked to the store and said “Give me some Tylenol.”
Sentence two: A grisly man, nearly eighty years old, awoke to a pain in his stomach and the urge to vomit. He pulled himself out of bed, lumbered to the local drug store, and spat “Give me some Tylenol” to the young woman behind the counter.

Okay, okay. Maybe a bit of an exaggeration with the edits between sentence one and two, but you get the point: using a wide variety of specific words, instead of a small variety of vague and overused words, paints a more vivid picture in the reader’s mind.

Why a Good Vocabulary Is Important

1. Your vocabulary can make or break the quality of your writing

Yes—it’s that important. Your vocabulary has the power to explain to your reader exactly what you mean, and provides a host of other benefits to your written content:

• brings your story to life with imagery and precise description
• makes your writing more interesting and engaging
• elicits from your reader the variety of emotions you want them to feel
• crafts detailed and precise arguments
• unlocks more intricate literary analysis
• demonstrates the complexity of your thoughts and ideas

2. A larger vocabulary allows a larger range of ideas

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. – Ludwig Wittgenstein

As writers, we often assume that our thinking precedes our word choice, which then leads to writing; we think, and then we articulate. But many linguists, those who study language, believe that language can introduce new ideas or concepts to our thinking—this holds especially true for abstract concepts, such as emotional states, feelings, or ways of viewing relationships between subjects and objects.

Consider the following definitions, which demonstrate how language can introduce us to new ideas and perspectives:

bolster (verb): to support, strengthen, or fortify
deplete (verb): to (over)use over time
melodramatic (adjective): extravagant or exaggerated

A student writing a literary analysis paper about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, for example, could use these terms to jumpstart an analysis of the novel, leading to the following analytical ideas:

• Harry Potter uses his school environment to bolster his faith in a positive future, despite a dismal home environment with the Dursleys.
• Both Harry and Malfoy display melodramatic behaviors to win attention, a pattern that solidifies their roles as rivals and foils of each other.
• Voldemort’s power became depleted when he tried to harm Harry. (This one is not analytical, but more of a plot summary using stronger language.)

When we get writer’s block, introducing new vocabulary provides a spark to jumpstart our analytical or creative processes. Similarly, when we have a pre-existing large bank of words from which to pull, our analytical and descriptive scope remains wide, increasing our potential to think and write.

Basic Tools for Improving Your Vocabulary: Thesaurus and Dictionary

Expanding your own vocabulary, and diving into the world of specific word choice, requires a thesaurus and a dictionary. 

When you notice yourself overusing certain words, or when you feel like your word choice isn’t as specific as you’d like, a thesaurus allows you to find synonyms, or words with similar meanings, for words you’ve used.

This entry, especially the related words section, provides ideas to add stronger and more specific communication. Writing about Jem Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird for example, you might describe his state before Tom Robinson’s trial as hopeful, which lends a clearer perception about Jem than does the word happy. 

While a thesaurus helps you find more specific and varied word swaps while you write, a dictionary expands your vocabulary while you read because it allows you to look up any unfamiliar words, growing your word bank.

For example, while reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, you may stumble across the following line, narrating part of a folktale:

Tortoise saw all these preparations and soon discovered what it all meant. Nothing that happened in the world of animals ever escaped his notice; he was full of cunning (Achebe, 96).

With a dictionary on hand, you note that you don’t know what cunning means. Looking inside the dictionary, you find the definition of cunning:

cunning (adjective): having or showing skill in achieving one’s ends by deceit or evasion

With this new definition, you realize that cunning fits well into a story or paper that you’re working on; thinking about your Harry Potter analysis, you observe that Malfoy and Harry both display cunning behavior—you’re on your way to a deeper character analysis, with new vocabulary aiding you.

And even if the new word doesn’t fit into an immediate writing task, at the very least you’ve added to your vocabulary a new word, which might find its way into your writing and speech in the future. 

Strategies to Improve Your Vocabulary

1. Keep a thesaurus and dictionary on hand

The Batman and Robin of improving your vocabulary. Luckily, you don’t need to carry around a physical dictionary everywhere you go. Apps such as Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Power Thesaurus allow you to discover new words and synonyms whenever you read or write.

2. Read as often as possible

By observing how other writers use words in context, you naturally incorporate these words into your own vocabulary. Read whatever you find interesting—online articles, newspapers, romance novels, classics, scientific literature—and over time, your vocabulary will grow, especially if you keep strategy number one in mind.

3. Keep a vocabulary journal

You can build upon steps one and two by actually jotting down the new words you confront, along with their definitions, and you can organize your journal any way you like—pen and paper, or on a Notes application on your phone. Crafting a sentence with the new word as part of your entry helps practice using the word in action, similar to taking batting practice to simulate a chunk of the game experience. Here’s a sample journal set up:

4. Aim to learn one new word everyday 

While applying the above strategies will likely expose you to at least one new word every day, apps like Merriam-Webster and Word of the Day can help guarantee and routinize daily strides in your vocabulary. Using these apps, especially when writing down the daily new word, will lead to noticeable improvements in your writing.

5. Explore new categories of jargon or technical language

Depending on your current writing task’s genre (for example, literary analysis, scientific research report, psychology, writing a mystery novel, or a personal narrative), delving into the technical language within a specialized field or culture could spur new ideas for language for your story. 

For example, when writing a research paper about social media’s effect on children, I could google social media terminology and peruse the following examples:

The relevant terms I find will provide instant benefit to my current writing task: they might inspire a new perspective or angle from which to consider my topic, or they might allow me to rephrase my paper’s current ideas with more expertise and appropriate language. I can implement these new terms like so:

Old excerpt: Children get manipulated very easily by social media, because they’re so young and therefore mimic the behaviors and advertisements they see on social media apps. Some apps use strategies intended to draw kids’ attention, just so the child will click into the app and spend screen time. For many content creators, increasing viewership matters more than providing a useful service to young viewers.

New excerpt: Children make up an extremely impressionable audience, vulnerable to whatever messages become prominent on social media apps. With clickbait content driving up viewership, content creators seem to care more about increasing impressions than having a positive influence.

Wrapping up

Writing and vocabulary go hand in hand—it’s nearly impossible to excel in the former without the latter. And expanding your vocabulary is a long game that takes time, intention, and proper habits—especially reading habits. By making an effort to read daily, in conjunction with a thesaurus, dictionary, and the other strategies listed here, you can reap the rewards of an expanded vocabulary: more effective communication and a wider range of ideas to spur thought. As writers, we all take this journey together. So let’s take a collective step forward and learn one new word today. Write on.