You can say that again: Periphrasing
Oct 29th, 2008 | By John Roach | Category: Big Picture, StyleOne of the most difficult tasks for a writer is avoiding repetition. One of the most difficult tasks for a reader is figuring out what’s going on when the writer succeeds.
(which is not a misspelling of “paraphrasing”) is the art of referring to some object by another name on second reference. When done well, it provides new, pertinent information. When done poorly, it turns your writing into an indecipherable mess.
Why writers periphrase
When writing about a single topic, you often need to refer to the topic repeatedly throughout the piece. Obviously, if you repeat the same word 20 times in 20 sentences, it will sound repetitive and monotonous. So you switch it up a bit. Instead of saying “Bush” over and over, you call him “the president.” The 15th time the “police” are called, they become “authorities.” When Batman descends upon the criminal underworld to deliver justice to yet another low-level hoodlum, he might be “The Dark Knight,” “The Caped Crusader,” or simply “the hero.”
All of the above are mostly fine. What’s not fine is when a banana becomes an “.”
When you should stick to the basics
Don’t swap out nouns willy-nilly. If you’re talking about bottle caps, talk about bottle caps — leave the “bowl-shaped plastic container sealers” out of it.
Yes, repetition can become distracting eventually. However, it is much easier to distract and even lose your reader by seemingly switching topics to something else entirely, especially when you haven’t done so. There is also a danger of using obscure words that the reader, or even worse, you, aren’t familiar with.
Basically, if you have to hit a thesaurus to liven things up, leave them unlivened.
When you should branch out
That’s not to say you shouldn’t occasionally introduce a new word here and there. After all, variety is the spice of life. However, there is only one good time to do so: When you can provide the reader with useful information.
If it’s useful to refer to a book as a “300-page novel,” go right ahead. But it’s not a “grimiore” unless it absolutely has to be. And it’s almost never a “tome.”
Likewise, it’s perfectly okay to refer to a Honda civic as a “car.” It probably shouldn’t be a “vehicle,” as that sounds like jargon, and definitely leave “conveyance” and “transport” in the dictionary for later.
Closing thoughts
While you may think you’re doing your readers a favor by introducing synonyms here and there, you may very well be doing them a disservice by making your writing hard to understand or, perhaps worse, irritating. Living in Georgia, I abhor reading about “the Peach State,” or, even worse, “the Empire State.” It’s just Georgia. It can even be “the state.” But archaic nicknames tend to be silly.
Keep It Simple, Stupid.
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This article was written by John Roach http://prowritingtips.com John is a writer and copy editor. You can follow him on twitter at . To see more posts click here |
Thanks for an excellent post, John. I’m ashamed to say I’ve read all the posts you have mentioned in Twitter, but have never commented before.
I first thought that — horrors! — you were misspelling “paraphrase,” given your recent posts on quotations. But I was wrong, and I learned a new word for something I was doing instinctively.
As a fellow Georgia dweller, I too am knickers-in-a-twisted over “the Empire State.” I can bear “the Peach State” only because it’s on car tags.
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@Mike Nichols -
You’re not the only one who thought that — my dear wife went so far as to call me an idiot! I added a little note to point out the difference.
In much the same way that Columbus is sometimes referred to as Fountain City by people too clever for their own good, there is a town in metro Atlanta sometimes referred to as Jonquil City. Even I, who copy edits for the area newspaper, am often thrown for a loop, wondering where this new city came from.
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