Good with Words by Patrick Barry
“Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?”
- Kevin Malone
Overview
What this classic line from The Office illustrates is that there are multiple ways to think about the words we say and how we say them. As Patrick Barry, author of Good with Words, writes, “Nobody has a monopoly on effective language.”
Consider the following example:
How we say what we want to say is important to get our point across.
The above sentence is confusing and unpleasant to read. It has a valid underlying point, but it’s hard to discern because of the word jumble and repetitiveness. What Barry’s book will teach is how to think about our word choices, what message we want to convey, and if the words we’ve chosen, and their arrangement, accurately conveys that message.
After reading the first chapter “The Words Under the Words,” I’ll attempt a revision of the above sentence:
How we say what we want to say is important to get our point across.
becomes
Word selection is crucial to our audience’s interpretation of our message.
The revision more clearly makes the point that “word selection” is the key to transmitting our thoughts to our audience. The phrase “how we say” could imply tonality, cadence, or inflection. The phrase “audience’s interpretation of our message” emphasizes that we are not forcing our point into the minds of our audience, rather we are relying on those minds to process the words we write in the same way that we expect them to be processed.
In this way, correct word choice, or the art of being “good with words,” can ensure that we are understood in the way we expect, and can transmit messages accurately.
Find free ePub and pdf versions of the book here: https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/1v53jz538