« Want More Business Referrals? | Home | When One Door Closes… »
Stuck For A Word?
By Michael | October 30, 2008
It never fails: I’m on a roll writing an article or sales copy and I hit a snag.
My college-educated brain wants to throw the 5 syllable word out in a sentence so I sound really smart. Blame it on 7 years of college and 2 health degrees.
My street-smart gut throws a fit and starts suggesting ordinary 1 or 2 syllable words instead. My gut reminds me that the average American reads on a 12 year olds level, not a PhD wanna-be’s.
Ten times out of ten, I go with my gut.
I don’t reach for a thesaurus or dictionary… although I do have both of them in my office. I don’t grab a list of “hot” words that sound salesy or sizzling. I have a stack of those lists too and almost never look at them.
I fire up my web browser and head to this free site instead: http://www.visuwords.com
Simply type the words you want to look up and Visuword does the rest. It will find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. It will give you visual diagrams, similar to the old atom molecule models you last saw in high school science class. Best of all, you’ll get additional ways the words associate.
According the Visuwords site:
Visuwords™ uses Princeton University’s WordNet, an opensource database built by University students and language researchers. Combined with a visualization tool and user interface built from a combination of modern web technologies, Visuwords™ is available as a free resource to all patrons of the web.
The word association is an overlooked key for finding a better word than the huge PhD language you’re trying to avoid. It can change the entire context of the sentence or paragraph.
Change the context to something easier to understand and you can keep your readers reading. If it’s something like a sales letter, that means there’s an increased likelihood that they will buy your product or service.
So next time you’re stuck for a word, give Visuwords a try. Your bank account may wind up thanking you!
Until next time,
Michael
![[Post to Twitter]](http://michaelhumphreys.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter.png){kind=icon}
Topics: Copywriting - Offline, Copywriting - Online | No Comments »