Words

 

The article I was reading was filled with overly long, complicated sentences, multi-syllable words and references I swear were designed to obfuscate rather than simply puzzle or confuse. Probably to show the world how smart the writer was and not to communicate the subject of the article.

Why an editor allowed it, I will never understand.

I came from a family where words were important. For me it was a rite of passage when I could score 100% each month on the Reader's Digest vocabulary quiz like my mother.

During a thunderstorm, which always terrified my mother, we would huddle in the living room and play word games. One was the color game where we one of us would name a color and the rest would have to guess the object of which we were thinking.

Once I chose yellow, a vivid, vivid yellow. No one guessed it. I kept stressing vivid. They gave up and when I showed them the stripe in the curtain which was so light-colored that it was more white than yellow, I learned I had the wrong meaning for vivid. For a long time I thought light was a better meaning than strong for vivid, but gave into the rest of the world.

Words were there to create --  not just for games or quizzes but to increase understanding in speaking and in writing. The attitude helped shaped me as a writer of news, marketing, PR, short stories, books and a poem.

As a cub reporter on a daily paper there was only one woman reporter, a Goliath, assigned to city hall. It was said she made politicians quake not just in their boots but in their entire suits.

She would cackle whenever she told the story of one especially slimy politician caught trying to paint over a sign that should have been left in its original. She must have bribed the Linotype operator to make sure that her copy broke on page one in a way that would conjure up images of a man carrying a can of ??? only to be look stupid when the reader turned the page. It read. "Mr. Name carried a can (continued on page 2)" and then on page 2 "(continued from page one) a can of black paint." A can of black paint became a city room joke.

Her coverage of Mr. Slimy Politician was filled with such subtleties, but never an inaccuracy, another lesson. 

My family, my first and second also final husband, and everyone I've ever lived with were/are readers, savoring good writing and clever phrasing. Bathrooms can also be called "reading rooms" and someone knocking on the door, desperate for entry can be told "one more chapter." 

I used the "one more chapter" line in Bern waiting for my radiologist. When he called "Frau Nelson" there were big smiles on the other people in the waiting room who understood English and a guffaw from him. He spoke seven languages fluently and another four functionally. We talked books and language during the 45 minutes he was heating my skin before being zapped. 

A a writer the words I choose, the way I arrange them are beyond important to me. In speech, sadly, I cannot copy and paste.

My husband, a journalist, and I exchange examples of good writing and, polish each other's efforts. We will joke about my use of albeit and my love of plethora and the rare chance to use it. When we find a word we like we tell the other. It is an added dimension to our marriage just as the words in my childhood added to my development.