…Similarity, agreement, and harmony.
We’ve made dozens of words that all mean the same thing, and there’s no shortage of ways to say one particular phrase. But in the search for synonyms to finish our essay or emphasize our point, does each word really carry the same meaning? Or do we only hide behind synonyms to hope they blur out our ineffective and incapable writing?
Synonyms are crucial components in any creation of any type of writing; but as quick as you go to search them up, the quicker they can become a setback. Typically, someone wants to find a synonym to avoid repetition and to provide clarity to the vision of their writing; their original words alone can’t convey the meaning they intended. Synonyms help to find a more accurate match to the meaning of a word you’re trying to communicate. However, synonyms of a particular word can still become repetitive if you overuse them. Take a look at this example:
“Perplexed by the baffling instructions, he grew disoriented, puzzled by the vague wording, bewildered at the contradictions, and ultimately dazed by how unclear everything remained”
Case in point, this example adds unneeded confusion and disorganization by overusing synonyms. The idea hits you over and over again, until all you see is everything but the intended meaning. In this case, it makes you feel exactly what the text is describing – extra points to whoever finds the synonyms –. To tally things up, synonyms can become confusing as much as they can prove helpful, and at times they’re only beneficial to reaching your word count and not to the comprehension of your reader. They help you reach the word limit, but limit the reader’s ability to understand your writing–if you let them.
Synonyms can offer a variety of valuable choices that hold the capability to discover destinations our ideas couldn’t pick up before. As easily as synonyms could overcomplicate your word’s meanings, they can also open up new ideas. I can’t count the number of times that finding the synonym of a specific word made me think more deeply about the point I was trying to prove or communicate across. The truth is that the process and transition of our thoughts and ideas into words and sentences will never be entirely perfect; and synonyms hold the ability to find the imperfections and issues in your writing you haven’t even thought about yet.
Additionally, synonyms can improve the tone of your writing. You have a specific meaning in mind, but you can only think of a select few words that match that definition. Sometimes, the words you think of alone won’t match the specific tone and feeling your story is trying to amplify and bring meaning to. For these points and more, synonyms can be a beautiful tool for editing your stories and tales in creative writing, nonetheless for finding rhymes in poems – which could open even more possibilities to the goals of your verses in the midst of their creations –. However, synonyms in scientific and historical writing are an entirely different story.
At times, it may be better to lay out a sentence at its simplest form when trying to convey a point at the sole purpose of reaching basic understanding. Sentences don’t have to be fancy, they need to be lucid. Take example of these two sentences:
Sentence 1: The writer quickly took hold of his pencil, and with the strength of all his years behind him, he laid the tip of the pen down upon the fibrous whites of the paper’s end, thinking of all that would come from the creation of this, his first piece.
Sentence 2: The writer started writing.
Granted, this example may be looking at the extremes of a point’s end, but still proves a key takeaway. When aiming to dramatize or emphasize a specific moment of a plot in creative writing, smart use of intended inflation of words and sentences through synonyms can bring helpful structure to a plain story and improve the importance of a scene. However, in writing where the sole purpose is to give and maintain the basic understanding of a concept at its minimum in order to build up and pave a path for comprehension to the maximum of that specific point, such as in scientific and historical writing, it will prove useful to keep things simple and comprehensible to the point a reader can read your writing as easily as it transitions from your mind to paper –or screen–.
Synonyms won’t always come out the way you intend them to. While writing this blog post, I was also looking for synonyms to diversify my word choice. Notably, I was looking for a replacement to ‘understandable’; and from google, I found the synonym, ‘legible’. However, ‘legible’ typically refers to the ability to read print or hand writing; not ideas or literary meanings. Although ‘legible’ could still fit in this context with a more indirect meaning, it is still important to acknowledge the risk that a synonym won’t always directly represent the meaning of a word you’re trying to convey. And, if writing formal and concise text, inefficient synonyms could completely change your word’s intended meanings.
No matter how much disorganization looking up synonyms will bring to your browser, if you understand and use synonyms effectively, they will prove a useful tool in the rationalization of your writing and the creation of new ideas to volatile topics. However, synonyms will destroy the way your readers understand your writing if handled incorrectly or overused. Inflating your sentences with synonyms will only bring your readers more struggle to connect to and from your points, and no word count is worth the loss of human understanding. All words convey meaning, and when orchestrated correctly, your sentences will tie in the point to your ideas just as humans have done since the beginning of our time. So, when looking for synonyms, don’t look at length; look at its compatibility.
Jakub Tinoco Lewandowski
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