In Composition you learned to cut wordiness. Diction goes further: choosing each word for what it means exactly, what it suggests, and how formal it sounds, always for the audience and purpose at hand.
| Praise | Neutral | Criticism |
|---|---|---|
| thrifty | careful with money | stingy |
| confident | sure of herself | arrogant |
| curious | interested | nosy |
| firm | unwilling to change | stubborn |
| aroma | smell | stench |
| slender | thin | skinny |
Key idea
Good diction is precise (the exact word, not a vague one), fitting in connotation (the feeling the word carries), and fitting in formality (the level of language the audience expects).
Why it works
Readers react to connotation before they think about meaning. Call a neighbor “thrifty” and you praise her; call her “stingy” and you have picked a fight, though both words say she spends little. Precise words also save readers work: “the bus was 25 minutes late” tells them more than “the bus was really late.”
Worked example: Lincoln’s three verbs
Gettysburg: “we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground.” Why three verbs that mean nearly the same thing?
- Dedicate means to set apart for a purpose: an ordinary civic word.
- Consecrate means to make sacred: a religious word.
- Hallow is older and holier still, the word of the Lord’s Prayer (“hallowed be thy name”).
- The diction climbs from civic to sacred, so the soldiers’ deeds seem holier with each step.
Answer: The verbs rise in connotation, from civic to sacred, so the ground grows holier as the sentence goes.
Worked example: Make it precise
Revise: “The new park is really nice and has a lot of good stuff.”
- Really nice and good stuff are vague: what, exactly?
- Name the things: a splash pad, shaded benches, a quarter-mile walking loop.
- Choose a precise judgment: welcoming, shady, busy?
Answer: “The new park is welcoming: a splash pad, shaded benches and a quarter-mile walking loop.”
Common mistake
Choosing a thesaurus word whose connotation doesn’t fit. Thrifty and stingy both mean careful with money, but only one is praise. Notorious means famous for something bad, so “our notorious science fair” insults the fair. Check each new word in a dictionary’s example sentences before you use it.