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Write for your audience plus a little. If you're writing a book for five-year-olds, you don't want to use "sesquipedalian," but there's nothing wrong with "lengthy." Part of how we expand our voc...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-13T12:00:36Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23267 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T05:19:11Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23267 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
Write for your audience plus a little. If you're writing a book for five-year-olds, you don't want to use "sesquipedalian," but there's nothing wrong with "lengthy." Part of how we expand our vocabularies is by seeing new words in context (and looking them up if we have to). I remember learning _guerdon_ (a reward or gift) and _gravid_ (pregnant) from Anne McCaffrey novels. You are correct in thinking that too many unusual words may break the reader's flow, so unless it's jargon (all the various terms for horse accessories or armor, for example), try not to overdo it. But the occasional stretch word is a good thing.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2016-06-08T09:53:12Z (over 8 years ago)
Original score: 2