Specific language is powerful. Use it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Being specific is very powerful. Don’t just say knife – tell us what kind, as is shown above.

 

There is an excellent blog post by Patricia Fripp on January 5, 2025 titled One Little-Known Secret to Sound Intelligent in a Speech – Expert Advice. Her third and fourth paragraphs are:

 

“During a coaching session, a highly educated engineer prepared for a session at his company’s international customer meeting. Initially he said, ‘There are two things people love about our services…’ Prompted by my question, ‘If it weren’t a ‘thing,’ what would it be?’ he clarified, ‘Innovative upgrades.’ I then asked, ‘There are billions of people in the world. Which people love your innovative upgrades?’ His response: ‘System administrators.’

 

On stage his message transformed to, ‘There are two innovative upgrades that system administrators love.’ This specific language tailored his message to an exact audience and enhanced its impact. This was especially critical as his audience was globally diverse, with customers from 71 countries.”  

 

In a similar vein, a post by David Murray at Writing Boots on February 20, 2025 is titled Introducing a New Writing Boots Feature: Gee, Why Do you Think I’m Re-running *This* Old Post? [from 2011]. He lamented our use of the word ‘broken’ to describe flawed things:

 

“When did ‘broken’ become the adjective by which we describe public education the financial regulatory system, the tax code, The Culture in Washington or American politics in general?

 

When, and why?”

 

He said it misapplied a mechanical diagnosis to an organic or social problem.

 

There also is a web page from the University of Washington on Effective Use of Language.   

 

Cartoons of a box cutter, fighting knife, and Swiss army knife came from Openclipart.