An Observation: The New Breed of Authors Are Using Obscure Words - Page After Page

Aloha!

I am a fairly well educated man with an advanced degree, and I am fairly well read. I consider myself to have a broad vocabulary. I have loved reading since I was a child. And I read often. These are not boasts, but background for a trend I have observed over the last 10 years or so in contemporary literature.

I have noticed that in the current books I am reading, many of the authors are using highly uncommon words, bordering on obscurity. It is not uncommon for me to have to look up words as I am reading to find their definition. I rarely if ever had to do this until fairly recently. Lately, I seem to have to look up definitions of words more often than not. Thank goodness for eReaders that let you do this with a touch on the screen. If I had to do this the old fashioned way with a dictionary, I'd probably have given up on a few contemporary books that I have read in the last 10 years.

One of the largest offenders of this observation is the author Jon Krakauer and his book "Into The Wild", the tragic story of Chris McCandless. If you have not read the book, perhaps you have seen the movie. During this read, I was constantly looking up words to find their definition. It got to the point where I almost abandoned the book. It went from irritating to ridiculous. I remember at one point I was actually looking up a word or two on every single page. At that point, reading ceases to become pleasurable for me and migrates toward becoming a chore.

It seems to me that at least some of the new breed of authors are either trying to impress by using obscure words, or they are just master wordsmiths to the point that your average reader is going to be frustrated by the high use of uncommon vocabulary. Truly. I would wager that at least 95 percent of the English speaking population would not know most of the words I have had to investigate over the last 10 years. I am referring to words that simply never come up in conversation, nor do they in any of the literature I have read in the past, except for Old English. And the argument that having to look up these obscure words increases one's vocabulary does not hold water. Why? Because, you will most likely never read nor use words this rare ever again.

Santa brought me a few new books for Christmas on my eReader. "Robert Redford's" biography and "Apropos of Nothing" the Woody Allen autobiography. Both have had me busier than I expected with looking up the definition of words that I quite honestly did not know.

Oh well. Just an observation. Perhaps it's just my luck of the draw with authors. Others may not have noticed this trend at all.

Mahalo!

-Zip

Well, now we all want to know so what's some examples so we might all see.

Agree. I was always taught that a simple word is best. On a related trend: good books used to be 150-200 pages long, now it seems 800 is the minimum....600 of which are pointless and tedious waffle....a good editor would sort this problem and yours.

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Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Well, now we all want to know so what's some examples so we might all see.

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I listed three in my original post. "Robert Redford" the Biography by Michael Callin. Not a plethora of examples in that book, but it's my lastest read and I have had to look up more words than I ever expected to.

"Into The Wild" by Jon Krakauer. The book that the Chris McCandless movie was based on. There are sections of this book whre I was looking up a word on just about every page, albeit not continually. It was irritating.

"Apropos of Nothing" the autobiography by Woody Allen. I'd expect Mr. Allen to be using a few high-brow words, but there were times when I was surprised by how many word definitions I had to research. Not a huge amount, but they were there, none the less.

There are many more examples. Most contemporary literature is going to have words that I will have to research to find their definition. Again, this was never the case until about the last 10 to 15 years in modern literature. At least, not that I ever noticed.

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Originally Posted by Storyvillenight

Agree. I was always taught that a simple word is best. On a related trend: good books used to be 150-200 pages long, now it seems 800 is the minimum....600 of which are pointless and tedious waffle....a good editor would sort this problem and yours.

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You raise a good point. I remember reading "The Stand" by Stephen King when I was in college. 823 pages. I lost interest in the read multiple times back then because the book was so shockingly long. The book took me months to finish in my undergraduate senior year, fall semester. I had forgotten about this trend until you mentioned it. And you are correct. A good editor would most likely have noticed and corrected this. Although, if the editor is of the same mindset, he/she may actually embrace the use of obscure words. As if the use of obscure vocabulary is showing high intelligence and a skill for high level writing.

It will be interesting to see where literature and public reading migrates to in the future. I read that some have noted where if you ride a subway in New York, you will see a trend toward young people actually reading paper books. Whereas older adults past the age of 40 are typically reading eBooks like Amazon's Kindle. I found that interesting at first. 20 year olds migrating back to paper, while 40 year plus adults are going purely electronic. You'd think it would be the other way around. Then I remembered that in my other avocation (High Fidelity and Vinyl Records), that young people are migrating back toward old fashioned records, while 40 plus adults continue to embrace Compact Disc.

I just thought of a specific example from "Robert Redford" the Biography by Callan. One of my most current books. The author writes of Redford's college friend working at a radio station in California. The station had a DJ that delighted in shocking the audience with "Erudite Innuendo". I would wager that most of the general reading public would have to research the definition here. Especially the word "Erudite". Most would have probably come across the word "Innuendo", although some may still not know the true difinition. I think I have heard or read the word "Erudite" before. However, quite honestly, I did NOT know the definition until I researched the word.

Putting hese two words together in modern literature actually illustrates my point perfectly. Erudite means "Having or showing great knowledge or learning". And in case some do not know, Innuendo means "An allusive or oblique remark".

Thus, "Erundite Innuendo" means an allusive or oblique remark showing great knowledge.

How many times in literature, let alone conversation, is the average person going to be discussing "Erudite Innuando"? Very seldom I am sure.

There is a thing called a reading score which is something I always check when I add content to websites for clients because user experience is important to the success of most sites.

Basically the reading score shows how easily understood the text is by various ages and levels of education.

To write anything a university professor might struggle with is not particularly wise in my humble opinion because the more difficult a particular piece is to read, the less people will read it.

I'm not suggesting written works of any kind should be dumbed down, just written with the target audience in mind.

interesting, i was going to suggest that the average person has a smaller vocabulary than a century ago but according to this article that's not true. I'm not a avid reader but i do enjoy learning new words. The question is, is using obscure words showing off or being more discriptive?

Excellent posts, gentlemen. Thank you.

I happened to research "Erudite Vernacular". We just defined "Erudite" above (showing great knowledge). "Vernacular" I am sure you know (the vocabulary used by a person).

Here is an article abstract discussing using erudite vernacular in writing, or using complex words needlessly. Evidently, there are text articles discouraging authors from using erudite vernacular. Glad to see that.

LINK TO ARTICLE HERE

IF you are too busy to bother, here is an excerpt;

Abstract
Most texts on writing style encourage authors to avoid overly-complex words. However, a majority of undergraduates admit to deliberately increasing the complexity of their vocabulary so as to give the impression of intelligence. This paper explores the extent to which this strategy is effective. Experiments 1-3 manipulate complexity of texts and find a negative relationship between complexity and judged intelligence. This relationship held regardless of the quality of the original essay, and irrespective of the participants' prior expectations of essay quality. The negative impact of complexity was mediated by processing fluency. Experiment 4 directly manipulated fluency and found that texts in hard to read fonts are judged to come from less intelligent authors. Experiment 5 investigated discounting of fluency. When obvious causes for low fluency exist that are not relevant to the judgement at hand, people reduce their reliance on fluency as a cue; in fact, in an effort not to be influenced by the irrelevant source of fluency, they over-compensate and are biased in the opposite direction. Implications and applications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

So my observation was on target. Interesting.

The e-book readers I prefer are those that allow me to “look up” words using a built-in or online dictionary.

As a kid, I used to browse the dictionary for words new to me and I quite enjoy finding words I did not know. That sounds very nerd-like, but it keeps me stimulated as long as the process doesn’t interrupt my enjoyment of the book and since most of the books I now read are in digital form, it doesn’t.

Interesting discussion, Zip-It's been decades since the last time I read The Stand, and a few years years since I read both Krakauer's Into Thin Air or Into the Wild (which my good buddy who also teaches AP English Language and Composition teaches). The Stand and other Stephen King was my guilty pleasure in high school. I don't recall being annoyed by the vocabulary in any of them, but as I said, it's been quite a few years.

I don't get to read nearly as much book-length contemporary fiction or non-fiction as I would like because my teaching focus is more on essays, long-form investigative journalism and cultural commentary that I can revolve around a more traditional anchor novel like Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities or Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, both of which contain some obscure words, especially Dickens. So you have probably just read much more contemporary stuff than I have to notice this trend.

Do writers from many eras including our own often show off their fancy 10-dollar words that no one will ever use? Absolutely. But another disturbing trend that I am noticing is that even our smartest students in Honors and AP English classes in some cases have shockingly limited vocabulary, probably because they just don't read unless its' assigned by a teacher, and even then there's always Spark Notes (which, don't even get me started!).

Here's another interesting exercise that's kinda related (though I know you're mostly talking about fiction). Take a stack of news magazines from the 50's and 60's, and one from this time period, and compare the writing. It's almost like two different languages. Certainly the vocabulary and lexile levels have been simplified for an audience that would generally rather be titillated and entertained than challenged.

I'll keep an eye out for the trend you're describing.

Very interesting read, ZZ

I'm not big on reading much, anymore. But I can understand what your saying, and I wouldn't consider myself all that educated, but more of a " jack of all trades "

It'd be similar to reading a book, written in Ebonics. Only those that wrote it, would understand it.

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Originally Posted by ScoutHikerDad

Interesting discussion, Zip-It's been decades since the last time I read The Stand, and a few years years since I read both Krakauer's Into Thin Air or Into the Wild (which my good buddy who also teaches AP English Language and Composition teaches). The Stand and other Stephen King was my guilty pleasure in high school. I don't recall being annoyed by the vocabulary in any of them, but as I said, it's been quite a few years.

I don't get to read nearly as much book-length contemporary fiction or non-fiction as I would like because my teaching focus is more on essays, long-form investigative journalism and cultural commentary that I can revolve around a more traditional anchor novel like Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities or Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, both of which contain some obscure words, especially Dickens. So you have probably just read much more contemporary stuff than I have to notice this trend.

Do writers from many eras including our own often show off their fancy 10-dollar words that no one will ever use? Absolutely. But another disturbing trend that I am noticing is that even our smartest students in Honors and AP English classes in some cases have shockingly limited vocabulary, probably because they just don't read unless its' assigned by a teacher, and even then there's always Spark Notes (which, don't even get me started!).

Here's another interesting exercise that's kinda related (though I know you're mostly talking about fiction). Take a stack of news magazines from the 50's and 60's, and one from this time period, and compare the writing. It's almost like two different languages. Certainly the vocabulary and lexile levels have been simplified for an audience that would generally rather be titillated and entertained than challenged.

I'll keep an eye out for the trend you're describing.

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Good points. "The Stand" was not mentioned because of erudite vernacular, but more because it was a very LONG read. Over 800 pages. And many (IMO) were fluff not related to the core plot that I wanted to get back to frequently during that reading. I never had any issues with Stephen King's writing with regard to using obscure words. But some of his writings tend to be a bit long in the tooth.

Krakauer's "Into The Wild" was different. There was one chapter where I found myself looking up a word on every page. Good grief. Lucky I was eReading, so I could just look them up quickly. But that was irritating, and removed much of the pleasure I normally would have received by being absorbed by the story. When you are constantly looking up words you do not know the meaning of, it ruins the reading experience for me. As I posted earlier, reading then becomes a chore, rather than a luxury.

Also, Krakauer's "Into The Wild" had a total chapter (a LONG chapter) that did not relate to the Chris McCandless story at all. It was a chapter about Krakauer's personal journey into the wild, unrelated to McCandless. As we discussed earlier in the thread, this total diversionary fluff in literature is not my cup of tea. I almost abandoned the read because of this, but suffered through to the end of that off-beat chapter and then continued the book.

This is a funny video related to the topic. The three little pigs in shakespearean english.

A long time ago George Orwell suggested these rules:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

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Originally Posted by tintin

This is a funny video related to the topic. The three little pigs in shakespearean english.

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HA! That was funny and amazing! Thanks for posting the link. I enjoyed that.

That reminds me, I dabble in rare book collecting. Not that much. I enjoy collecting rare books, but on a very small scale. My most valuable book so far is "Lays of Ancient Rome" by Thomas Babington Macaulay. The copy I have is from the late 1800s. Some may know one passage from this work from the Tom Cruise movie, "Oblivion" where he reads the excerpt "Horatius at the Gate" to the alien.

This book is not quite as challenging to me as reading Shakespeare, but given when it was written, in England, it was a challenge. However, over the years, I've grown to really love the book.

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Originally Posted by welshwizard

A long time ago George Orwell suggested these rules:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

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I was unaware of this (as far as I can remember, anyway). So thank you! I really like this. And it does not surprise me that Orwell wrote it.

The Stand, revised with previously deleted content restored, is just over 1,000 pages. The additional content was restored to help tie in to the Dark Tower series.

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Originally Posted by tintin

This is a funny video related to the topic. The three little pigs in shakespearean english.

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LOL! This takes me all the way back to elementary school, when I first heard/learned the "erudite" version:

Three decrepit rodents, three decrepit rodents
Observe how they motivate, observe how they motivate
They all pursued the agrarian's spouse
Who amputated their appendages with a culinary article
Did you ever observe such a spectacle in your existence
As three decrepit rodents

Sixty years on...

That was an awesome video. Thanks for sharing it.
I shall go forth and inundate those of similar mirth with repetitive extolling of its virtue and regale those of less prominent whimsical dalliances with its address of domicile to aid their delineative evolution...
Hehe.
Good insights on authors of today vs yesterday as well gents.
I used to read voraciously as a lad, was grounded a lot..
Tease my wife that marriage leads to illiteracy. Haven’t been able to read a book in bed since I got married..
:rofl2:

More interesting points and authors. I have taught a ton of both Orwell and Shakespeare over a quarter century in the classroom-love 'em both. Shakespeare invented dozens of words, and so many of our common sayings come from his plays; Poor Richard's Almanac (Ben Franklin), Oscar Wilde, and the "Wisdom literature" from the Old Testament ("Ecclesiastes" and "Proverbs") account for much of the rest.

As for books that could be trimmed some, Invisible Man gets pretty long and tedious in the middle stretch where the narrator is in "the Brotherhood." Even my beloved Look Homeward Angel (about my hometown of Asheville) is pretty long, though I just get lost in Wolfe's extravagant language-nobody ever wrote like him! And even though I find the whaling lore fascinating, I have been "reading" the notorious Moby Dick for many years now-I'm about halfway through it lol! Another one I mentioned above, A Tale of Two Cities, clocks in at almost 400 pages of small print in very archaic Victorian-era English. Many of my students struggle with it (or, I suspect, don't even bother), so I'm thinking of subbing in Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is quite a bit shorter and, my colleagues in other schools report, more engaging for students.

One notoriously long contemporary work that is even as we speak giving me the stink-eye from my bookshelf is Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. The 1500-pages of it are the main thing keeping me from starting it, tbh.

I think over the years there has been a general dumbing down of the population which goes along with impatience and wanting things now and things being easier. Most high school graduates 100 years ago knew more than most college graduates now.

At one time the idea was to challenge students not dumb down the curriculum to their level. When I took college english I had to read The Canterbury Tales in old english. Yea it was struggle but I survived it.

So, don't start me on our educational system and the results it has wrought on our population I could write 1000 pages but I guess most wouldn't read it.

The video, reminded me of something that most of us say differently, today. :rofl2:

Attachment 328080

Over the holiday I watched the movie the Professor and the Madman.

Based on the book The Surgeon of Crowthorne.

I haven't read the book but I usually like better whichever came first the book or the movie.

Much of the plot is based around the making of the Oxford English Dictionary.

The best point of the movie to me was when it was stated that language is always changing so the job would never be done.

Another point that I have been thinking of posting is technical/trade related and then almost in code and snobbish.

Perioperative Care Center. Or POCC . Before and after surgery and sometimes including surgery. (Don't get this mixed up with PCC. Preventing Colorectal Cancer!)

Why do the put signs and arrows in the hallways for POCC and try to direct the incoming patient there!

Well, the English language is always evolving. If you were to talk to someone from 200 years ago, I doubt you would understand what they were saying.
Also, some words take on a totally different meaning over time.
There are also hundreds, maybe thousands of words plagiarised from other languages.
If you are having to look up meanings of words constantly, that would be terribly frustrating.
Zip Zop, I never look up the meaning of a word while reading. You can almost always work that out from preceding and proceeding words in the sentence.
Moby Dick was a struggle though...

I agree that how the word is used in context makes a whole lot of difference.

Unless it is a technical manual I pass over many words that I am 98% sure of their meaning.

I would have to look up "fluency" to understand this because it seems more nuanced that what my pea brain definition is. I have found that I tend to define words based on context and so there are many words that I think mean one thing but are actually a little different. Like Erudite I thought mean pompous, but apparently it is just a pompous way of saying smart :).

Probably should have quote replied but I didn't know I was two pages late. This was in reference to ZipZop's article in post 9. https://sharprazorpalace.com/convers...ml#post1927039

Since we are on the topic of words, what about spelling?(my weak point, or is that week?) anyway, I understand that at one time the exact spelling wasn't important as long as one could tell what the word was. The english language is full of rules and words that make no sense or don't follow the same rules. Since we are dumbing people down let's go back to the old ways. I demand change! :)

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Originally Posted by tintin

Since we are on the topic of words, what about spelling?(my weak point, or is that week?) anyway, I understand that at one time the exact spelling wasn't important as long as one could tell what the word was. The english language is full of rules and words that make no sense or don't follow the same rules. Since we are dumbing people down let's go back to the old ways. I demand change! :)

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Before I realized he was talking about professional writers I was going to point out that I use more complex words when I don't know how to spell the common one. I'm not trying to sound smart, it is just that sometimes I am so far off spell check doesn't even know what to suggest.

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Originally Posted by outback

The video, reminded me of something that most of us say differently, today. :rofl2:

Attachment 328080

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Hmmmm? Not a word i like to use but apparently I do a lot of that when i'm working in the smithy! (iron that is)

Spell check does not lead me in the right direction many times.

I have to look up the work to make sure I an correct and the spell check isn't!

I looked up my error and work instead of word.........

At first I missed my error and I am sure many people in their reading of my post wouldn't.

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Originally Posted by tintin

Since we are on the topic of words, what about spelling?(my weak point, or is that week?) anyway, I understand that at one time the exact spelling wasn't important as long as one could tell what the word was. The english language is full of rules and words that make no sense or don't follow the same rules. Since we are dumbing people down let's go back to the old ways. I demand change! :)

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I tried to explain that to one of my English teachers, my mother. Yeah...I grew up with a teacher. So is why I sucked at school. Being it never let out for me, I blocked most of it out of my life.

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Originally Posted by outback

I tried to explain that to one of my English teachers, my mother. Yeah...I grew up with a teacher. So is why I sucked at school. Being it never let out for me, I blocked most of it out of my life.

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Mike-You could empathize with my youngest son, who hated school all the more because both his parents taught in the same building (though he admits that he never would have graduated had we not brought him to our high school for just that reason). And that meme about the "field where I grow my f*&ks" is pretty popular right now; I've sent variations of it to friends I knew would get it.

For you guys who are interested in the evolution of the English language, there was a fascinating 9-part documentary and book back in the 90's called The Story of English. I don't know if it's still available-last time I saw one was on VHS. This aspect of linguistics has always fascinated me, especially after I discovered that some of the speech patterns and "country" idiosyncracies of my grandmother and our Scots-Irish ancestors who settled in my native North Carolina mountains survived almost intact in the most remote hills and dells of Northern England and other far-flung parts of the Empire. And some of what is called "country" by outsiders is just remnants of Old English that have held on in relative isolation in the coves and hollers of Appallachia, at least until radio, movies and television started slowly eroding them. Similarly, the old Gullah language still hangs on in a few very old speakers out on the South Carolina sea islands. Having traveled the backroads of several British Commonwealth countries and many places in our own country, to hear all the different accents, unique words and idioms fascinates me endlessly. Language is culture (as is food, but that's a whole 'nother rabbit hole).

And yeah, English is the hardest 2nd language to learn because it breaks so many of its own rules

It's interesting that in my youth I was a magnificent speller. I noticed a sharp decline in my spelling ability throughout my 40s. Today, I can spell most words without thinking about them, but certain words I really have to be careful when I type them.

Throughout school, grammer never was a hard challenge for me, and I seemed to excell in English classes, except for a small stint in undergrad school. At that time I was really getting enamored with Hemingway. His style of writing can sometimes include run-on sentences. That worked for him and I enjoy his style of writing, for the most part.

Unfortunately for me, I tried to adopt this Hemingwayesque style to my essay writing with a professor that was not a fan run-on sentences. That dropped my grade a degree or two. In hindsight, I'm glad I had a professor that straightened me out on this.

Otherwise I'd be writing sentences that just went on and on without any regard for the reader having to separate thoughts as he or she can't get inside my head to find out my thinking process while I am putting thoughts down on electronic paper via my computer keyboard without caring for thought or phrase separation that would make the reading of my prose more succint and elegant even though I think that the style of writing may be better in copying a master's style that used it frequently and seldom had others critical of his style but then again Hemingway was a one-off kind of author that had his start working for the Toronto Star as he lived in France as a correspondent during the time where living in Paris was inexpensive for expats.

How's that for a run-on sentence? :)

I suck at vowels. Is it mentOr, mentEr, or mentAr. Donor rhymes with loaner, but spelled different. Bugger off English. Sensible and noticeable...same frigging rhyme but nope, different spelling. Of course, it may just be the drawl. Some of them erudite professors may say them differently.

Pretty good run-on sentence there, Zip. Writers develop by reading other writers and slowly practicing and incorporating elements of their style. That is the foundation of how I teach writing in my combined AP English Lang. and Lit. course. Both prose analysis (literature/fiction) and rhetorical analysis AP Language (non-fiction) are the backbone of the course. We are constantly putting written passages under the document camera and up on the screen as students discuss what a writer is doing and why as they highlight and make annotations, then figure out arguments/theses they can support in essays. And once you can get students (or any reader who is interested) to figure out WHY writers use certain techniques and moves, light switches start to turn on.

As we all know, especially in the post-modern era after WWII and beyond, the best writers break all "the rules." I'm constantly telling students the old adage "You have to know the rules before you can break them." Most students have all they can handle just writing good sentences without errors. Typically only my most advanced writers can break out of the box and start using techniques consciously for certain effects. Those will be the ones who score 5's on their AP exams.

Teaching writing is hard. A few students seem to have a knack for it. For all the rest, it's a lot of work, mainly because they haven't read enough good writing to even know what it is, much less incorporate it into their own writing. Then there's that all-important elusive, unique "voice" every great writer has, but which has been skilled and drilled out of most students by the time they get to me with years of formulaic, paint-by-numbers essays (see learning the rules above).

I could go on all day on this topic. I'm generally lost when some of you guys start talking about tearing down engines and such, but this is right in my wheel-house.

And once you can get students (or any reader who is interested) to figure out WHY writers use certain techniques and moves, light switches start to turn on.

I don't know how far I will get but can you point me in this direction?

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Originally Posted by planeden

I suck at vowels. Is it mentOr, mentEr, or mentAr. Donor rhymes with loaner, but spelled different. Bugger off English. Sensible and noticeable...same frigging rhyme but nope, different spelling. Of course, it may just be the drawl. Some of them erudite professors may say them differently.

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There is an example of how how a words meaning changes over time.
Frigging is an old term which means a female masturbating..

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Originally Posted by Grazor

There is an example of how how a words meaning changes over time.
Frigging is an old term which means a female masturbating..

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I didn't know this.

Look at the strop definition "informal"

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/.../english/strop