Thread: 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.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

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

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.

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.

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.