Words of Power!

Good Morning Viissada,

Thought I'd try a new language this morning.  Works better than the last ones I found to refer to you all (:

Words are a writers stock in trade.  Most of us love words.  We all (by which I mean all writers), love words for the conveyance of information.  The telling of a story, the picture of a poem, the history of a lost culture.  Some of us even enjoy playing with words.  To make words dance and do things that, perhaps, they should not be able to do (even if it is just the gut splitting groan that escapes when you break out a Tom Swifty (a particular nasty pun, E.G. '"The doctor had to remove my left ventricle," said Tom halfheartedly.'

How often, though, do you think about the actual power of a word.  Just a single word.  Yes, words taken together can make us cry bitter tears of anguish, or stand and shout at injustice and betrayal.  But what about a single powerful word?  Words that when added to a sentence transform the entire meaning?


There are a lot of words out there that a lot of people feel are very powerful. (See that, I used one right there.  Do you see it? It's sitting next to powerful.)  Very is a useless word.  If you see it, throw it out.  It adds nothing but weakness to your sentence.  Go ahead, try it; out loud read that first sentence with, and then without "very", I'll wait.


See? By no means is it a perfect sentence, in fact, by no means is it good.  But without "very"? It's better.


So what do I mean by "words of power"? Well, these are words that convey a huge amount of meaning, and there are different sorts of words that bring about meaning in different ways.  Much better than "very" is "always".  It tells you something.  Whatever is always, never deviates. (Look, there's another one of those powerful words!)  Always and never, though, are so powerful that they must be handled like uranium. Misplaced, and you could burn yourself, just as easily as you can with words that seem to convey power, but fall short of it.


Enough rambling for me.  Try to find some powerful words and use them today.


- Sam Justice