you've probably noticed most of these by now, but i'll just run through the most prominent ones...
•fancy style
i use a lot of complicated words when i write. i blame the two vocab books i had to study during sophomore year of high school. gems such as "precipitate", "propensity", "paragon", and other words not starting with the letter "p" made their way into my writing lexicon. even when i use really simple words, i suspect that my writing still comes across as too polished. reading my own blog posts makes me feel like i'm reading a dissertation or something. i'm not sure if other people get the same impression though. especially with all the memes, bad jokes, and self-deprecating humor thrown into the mix.
•sultan o' synonyms
i've professed my love for thesaurus.com before, but i can't over-emphasize how much i rely on it. i used it at least three or four times before i hit this paragraph. i guess my use of it stems with my desire to avoid sounding monotonous. as i've said before, i make sure to avoid repeating myself redundantly...
there are a few stories from my past english classes that might shine some light on my fascination with originality. my senior year english teacher would sometimes make us write papers where no two sentences in the same paragraph could start with the same word. so you have to make your writing pretty fresh to get around that.
at one point in that class, a friend who was editing one of my papers told me that i used the word "additionally" too often. but she did give me a splendid alternative, which is why i also use "furthermore" every now and then to spice things up. i'm terrible at transitions so those two words are kind of like my crutches...
another peer editing session, this time during my english class in my first year of college, was also pretty noteworthy in my development as a writer. one of my classmates noted that it was okay to use less-complicated words and repeat words in moderation. and i was like "holy shoot, why didn't i think of that before then??". so i took her advice into account while fixing up my paper, and i think it made the flow a lot better.
so yeah. there's always a synonym (or synonymous phrase, at least) for whatever you want to talk about. the trick is to avoid making it sound too clunky or too intellectual. there's the rub.
•what's up with the number 3?
i didn't think i'd have to return to the dreaded sandwich analogy, but i'm gonna bring it up briefly. i noted that i came up with three reasons to explain my position because of the essay format i learned as a child. you might have also noticed there were three slices of ham - er, subcategories under the section on apple. yes, the sandwich is packing double threes! triple threes if you count the counterpoint subcategories...
you'll find that sentence trios pop up in nearly every post i make. for example, let's take a gander at these lines from one of my old posts, "returning":
which classes will be the ones to stress and disappoint me? what opportunities will arise and then come crashing to the ground? what dreams will splinter under the pressure of life itself?melodramatic, eh?
as you'll notice, this cluster of questions contains three similar sentiments concerning my return to college. clusters in a similar format can be found throughout my posts. three comparisons/contrasts, three examples to support a claim, three statements of affirmation, and so on.
so the burning question still remains - why 3?? personal significance? religious connotation? aesthetic appeal?
truth is, there's no big reason behind it. it's just a fun writing quirk i throw into my posts just for the heck of it. i'm curious to know how often the number three comes up, 'cause even i don't know at this point...
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