Blogging Tips

Another List Of Words To Watch

As always, the list of words that you need to watch when you’re writing your blogs grows and shrinks depending on the fashion. One thing that you can be fairly certain of is that among the attributes for dialogue or quotes, most people agree that said is usually the best. Although even the experts admit that occasionally you need some substitutes to avoid sounding monotonous, you need to be careful here and especially around choices like stated or declared.

When you’re writing any kind of dialogue that you’re using for your blogs there are several words that are widely misused and these include,

Asserted
stated
commented
observed

Asserted, stated and declared are often commonly used for said but they are stronger and much more formal than what you might need. For example to assert something means to put forward an opinion or another kind of strongly held position. When that’s done correctly, the statement generally will not need the attribute asserted. Generally a comment or a piece of dialogue can stand on its own when it’s properly written without the word asserted added.

Remember that the attribute remarked applies to casual statements only. For example someone might say that it’s a fine day in this way:

“The sun is shining today,” he remarked.

You should never use the word remarked to attribute a more meaningful statement, however.

“The government has been stealing money, ” the official remarked.

When you become good enough at writing dialogue or attributing quotes you won’t even need to use anything other than the word said. For example when you look through some of the Master’s work like Henmingway, you’ll see where he rarely used anything but the word said and was even able to attribute dialogue without anything after the quotes quite often.

But attributing dialogue or other kinds of quotes isn’t the only place where you need to watch out and choose your words carefully. There are other places in blog writing specifically and writing in general where you can select the wrong loaded word and change the meaning of a sentence completely.

There are many such examples of these loaded words that are commonly misused but one of the ones that’s most commonly misused is the word admit. It’s important to understand that this word means usually implies yielding reluctance under pressure
(usually implies yielding under pressure).

Finding the right word for the right context is important and as a blog writer you can find yourself using words in situations where you think you have the meaning correct but you don’t when to look into it.

For example the word bureaucrat is commonly a slight for official, civil servant or any other kind of government employee even though many people use it without meaning that connotation. These notes aren’t implying that the words mentioned here should never be used but only that they should be used with extreme caution while taking into account their actual meanings in the context of the sentence where you are using them.