Can we please use simple language, I don’t know what the fuck exhort means, I mean I do now (strongly encourage or urge (someone) to do something) but I didn’t. Why are you trying to make me learn!?!
Edit: TIL everyone on lemmy are fucking English majors.
The typical news publication is written at a sixth grade reading level. Do with this information what you will.
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21% of Americans are functionally illiterate.
If only there was some kind of book, created decades ago, with a list of words, in alphabetical order, and what each word means in different contexts.
If only such a book was added to a worldwide database that anyone can access from any kind of computer, so that anyone can use it at any time.
What would we even call something like that? A book that helps with diction. I got it, a Dictionpedia.
Ohh, ohh. How about another similar book, with, you know, similar words that can be used in a certain words place, that would be the bees knees
Or the cat’s pajamas
This is one of those things where you think you’re making a justified complaint about a publication using unnecessarily esoteric language that you feel alienates the reader. This is something that has the possibility of being a legitimate complaint. There is a good argument for not talking over your audience’s heads.
But everyone who read the article just sees a guy who can’t read…
My partner is English as second language and I never dumb down anything I say to her. She asks me the words she doesn’t know and I explain them as best I can or we look them up on my phone when I’m not certain I can articulate the meaning accurately enough to provide a good example. I think reducing the vocab that I use with her vs english-native friends and family would be insulting to her. Same as how I wouldn’t dumb it down speaking to a 10yo (it’s different for toddlers and those not much older, obviously).
I’m educated well enough, I was mostly being sarcastic but the fact is that no one uses that word. I figured what it meant based on context but still had to go look it up and was annoyed. Sometimes it seems like a writer feels like being vague and beats you over the head with a thesaurus.
There are two types of people. Those who get excited when they see a word they don’t know and those who get annoyed.
Damn right! I have to look up any word I don’t know out a compulsive need to ensure that I fully understand what I’ve read. It’s a beneficial OCDish trait, unlike some of the other ones.
This is the opposite of vague
When was the last time you used the word exhort in a sentence? Or heard it? The word has a specific meaning sure but using uncommon vernacular makes the sentence vague.
If the sentence is hard to understand because the writer omitted important context, we can say that the sentence is vague.
If the sentence is hard to understand because the reader can’t read at a sixth grade reading level, we can say that the reader is stupid.
Exhort isn’t an advanced word. It’s intermediate vocabulary that you managed to go without your entire life until today. You could act like an adult with a functioning brain and simply look up the word you don’t know and add it to your personal vocabulary so that you won’t be confused by it again. Instead, you have decided to throw a tantrum about having to face a single word you didn’t already know.
Honestly, I don’t know how you are making the arguments are you without feeling completely humiliated. Most people just quietly educate themselves when they catch themselves unaware of a common English word. It’s wild to broadcast to the whole world that you didn’t know the word “exhort”, and then double down even after it is apparent that you are the only one who didn’t already know that word.
Nobody here is siding with you on this, because nobody else sees the problem you do. That’s not a good sign when everyone reads the same article you did, and you’re the only one insisting that the article was unreadable. You’re just revealing that, out of everyone who read the article, you’re the worst at reading.
Literally how does it make the sentence vague? I don’t want to be rude but do you not know what vague means either?
When I write I use the right word that says what I want to say/get across. To pick a word that is less clear because it’s more common is infact doing to opposite of your complaint. It’s annoying to me you can’t expand your lexicon instead of have to “dumb” it down for people like you.
You can be as high and mighty as you want but you won’t find a wide audience without relaxing your lexicon and writing with prose. In translation, you’ve got to dumb it down because most people are dumb. We see a big and/or uncommon word and give up on the entire piece, I hate to break it to you but that’s just the way it is.
Edit: TIL everyone on lemmy are fucking English majors.
Nah, everyone’s shitting on you cause you’re just the only one that doesn’t know how to take ten seconds for a Google search.
God damn journalists and their word conspiracy! They’re clearly being propped up by the powerful dictionary lobby and forcing readers through to their products. Fuck you Big Dictionary!
Big Pharma is short for Big Pharmaceutical, is Big Dict short for Big Dictionary?
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