Video: Examples of Poor Word Choice

Choose your words carefully! Find out examples of poor word choices in this free self-editing lesson for writers and job seekers.

Video Transcript

When we are talking about word choice and usage. It is important to keep in mind who your audience is. It's really good to use interesting words, big words that maybe you have just learned. But even more important than that is to make sure what you are saying is understood by your reader. So for instance using specialized jargon, using informal slang, that's not necessarily going to make sense to your reader. So reread your sentences and make sure it is going to be understood by your audience. Let's take a look at a couple of examples. The first example we have could be a letter that perhaps a college student is sending to someone when they are looking for an internship and as you can see it is very informal. We have: Dear Mr. White, When I was trolling some career Web sites this week, I noticed that your company has an opening for an intern this summer. The position sounds rad. Can you shoot me back and e-mail and tell me what's up with the application process? Even if this is a person that you know and you've met it's probably still not appropriate to send this type of email. It's someone who is clearly in a position of power compared to where you are and you want to show some respect and use a little more formal language. You can still be fun but make it a little more formal. The second example we have uses a little jargon that not everyone would understand. We have: We got the dailies in today and the time code didn't match on cameras A and B, so we had to go through and find the sync points manually. If you are sending this to someone who edits video, it will make complete sense but say you are sending to an actor or someone else who is helping with production there not necessarily going to know what you are talking about. So we are going to have to go through and make this a little easier to understand. Here are a couple of ways to make these word choices better and to better communicate your message. The first example we have: Dear Mr. White, I am interested in learning more about your company's internship opportunities. Can I call you later this week to set up an informational interview? This gets you message across. It's a little shorter and it's more to the point. Second we've got: We will need extra time to edit today's video because we had technical issues because of the way we shot the footage. This makes sense to everyone no matter what business they are in and it's just a better sentence.

Examples of Poor Word Choice

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