The words in the heart above were made with love. And love was one of the favorite words selected as their favorite by some of my friends.
When I put a call out on Facebook for people to tell me what their favorite word was, I received 67 responses. Not too bad for a quick poll as summer began to wind down.
As I promised my Facebook friends who participated, their words made it into this blog post which I will share with my students next week. Some words are more powerful than others; words help us truly define things we want to express or clarify; and when stringing words together, they make up sentences, and through those collected sentences, we have the capacity to tell stories. Every word we write should move our stories along, help us tell poignant memories or fictions, and keep people entertained, because the bottom line is, readers can easily put the article, paper, or book down and move on to something else if they become disinterested.
Writers are constantly challenged to keep readers engaged.
Words matter.
In order to fall in love with writing, you have to fall in love with words. Choosing the right ones for particular purposes requires you to have a handle on clarity, as well, because good writers are easily understood. Additionally, the ability to use words to your advantage typically means that you read a lot and are constantly exposed to words, thereby you grow your own vocabulary. And if you are not a reader and want to be a writer, I strongly suggest you start to read.
As the fall semester begins for my students and me on Monday at Stevenson University, and as I will be teaching three writing courses (two sections of feature writing and one section of travel writing) along with one advertising class, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that these subjects require the use of words. We’re going to do a lot more with word structure, sentence clarity, and readability this semester.
Next week, I’ll have students execute a similar activity in class, and they will have to share some of their own favorite words with their classmates.
To my Facebook friends who participated–thank you so much. It means the word–I mean world–to me.
xx
