ShmoopTube

00:04

[Coop and Dino singing]

00:13

You might be familiar with the expression: "The right tool for the job." [Man fixing a bath tub]

00:17

Well, that doesn’t just apply to electricians and plumbers and all those guys whose butt

00:21

cracks are always showing.

00:22

It applies to you, too! Choosing the right word when you’re writing

00:26

is important when it comes to conveying your intended meaning.

00:29

The amount of options you have is almost endless – seriously, have you seen how big dictionaries [Boy reading a dictionary]

00:33

are?

00:34

But a lot of the time, there will be one word that gets the job done better than the rest. [Hand writes sunny in the blank space of a sentence]

00:39

Unfortunately, you can't just go to your hardware store and buy a handy-dandy word kit to keep

00:43

in a drawer for when you need it. You'll need to find those words on your own by building [Man struggling to carry a word box]

00:47

up your vocabulary.

00:48

One great way to build up your vocabulary is by reading. The more you read, the more [Girl reading in the library]

00:53

likely it is that you'll bump up against new and exciting word that you might want to use

00:57

later.

00:57

And it’s fun! Seriously, reading a book is like petting a puppy on a roller coaster. [Boy with a puppy on a rollercoaster]

01:01

Well… slightly less dangerous. …And slightly less cute and fuzzy. But it's still fun.

01:06

And if you’re looking for some more intensive vocabulary expansion, the dictionary and the

01:10

thesaurus are always good bets. [Person types thesaurus into shmoogle webpage]

01:12

They even make paper copies of those in case your electricity ever goes out and you have

01:16

to live in the stone age…

01:20

Want an example? Well today's your lucky day,

01:21

we just happen to have one right here! [Example lands on girls head]

01:23

Say we're writing a story about a guy who's pretty angry all the time.

01:26

We’re thinking the word "angry" is a little bit vague. And, anyway, we have a very particular

01:31

kind of angriness in mind: not screaming-at-trees angry… [Boy screaming at a tree]

01:34

…but something a bit more subdued. So what do we do?

01:38

Since we're looking for a particular synonym for "angry," a thesaurus is our best bet.

01:42

We look up "angry," and see if any of those synonyms feel like the best fit. [Synonyms for angry in a thesaurus]

01:47

"Vexed" works pretty well, so let's go with that.

01:50

But hold on a minute – when choosing the right word, you also have to consider your

01:54

audience.

01:55

Communication is all about being understood, so if your word choice gets in the way of [Man sat in a doctors office]

01:59

that, something's going horribly wrong.

02:02

It's great that we figured out that the right word to describe our angry man was "vexed."

02:06

But if this story is really for young kids, we're getting a tiny bit ahead of ourselves for four year olds, [Young kids in an audience]

02:12

the word "vexed" might be too confusing for them, and we'd probably be better off just

02:16

calling the guy "angry."

02:17

It’d be a little bit crazy if we have to use a thesaurus to write our story and readers

02:21

would have to use a dictionary to read it. The more you read and the better you know [Boy reading a dictionary on the sofa]

02:24

your audience, the better you'll be at choosing the right tool for the job.

02:28

But, uh… pull your pants up a little while you're at it…let's leave the butt crack [Man's butt blurred while carrying word box]

02:31

look to the plumbers.

Full Transcript