General Tips for Elevating Diction

  1. Eliminate colloquial language
  2. Eliminate slang
  3. Eliminate vague adjectives/adverbs
  4. Eliminate feeling words
  5. Eliminate over-explaining; don’t talk down to your audience.
  6. Eliminate platitudes/cliches/metaphors.
  7. Do elevate language to precise words, but do not just thesaurusize (should totally be a word).
  8. Use language that shows a sophisticated understanding of vocabulary. This may (and most often will) require specialized vocabulary of your topic.

 

Resources

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