The Right Word vs. the Almost Right Word

(Thinking about Sentences)

Mark Twain famously said, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. It’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

Twain meant that small changes in language can create significant shifts in impact, the difference between the soft glow of a lightning bug and the sudden total illumination afforded by the lightning.

To illustrate, two sentences:

I have smelled what suntan lotion smells like spread over 21,000 pounds of hot skin.

And

I have smelled what suntan lotion smells like spread over 21,000 pounds of hot flesh.

To which of these sentences did you have an emotionally visceral response, perhaps a kind of cringe?

Almost certainly the second sentence, which appeared in an essay by David Foster Wallace called “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.” In the essay, he writes about his experience on a weeklong cruise to the Bahamas. If you couldn’t tell by the title or the sentence, the author did not find the experience enjoyable.

The first sentence is my inferior alteration of the original.

Flesh, flesh, flesh, flesh, flesh. Is there a grosser word in the English language? If there is, it would be “moist.” Moist . . . flesh.

Shudder.

One of the key skills for writers is to develop a sensitivity to using the right word versus the almost right word.

For this experience, you’re going to practice this skill for the benefit of an interested audience.

You will be creating a work of analysis and argument claiming a particular word choice is right and then explaining why you believe this to be true.

AUDIENCE

Your readers are interested in writing and like to spend time thinking about the kinds of language choices writers make and the different impacts of those choices. They want to be turned on to other examples that will help increase their sensitivity to these choices.

PROCESS

1. Find an example sentence.

There are two possible routes.

You can find what seems to be a perfect sentence that you can then alter to make less perfect, like I demonstrated above when I substituted “skin” for “flesh.”

Or you can identify a good to very good sentence that you think could be made better by altering a word or two (but not more than that). You’re not rewriting an entire sentence; you’re looking for examples to illustrate the right word versus the almost right word.

Create your two versions of the sentence: one that clearly has the right word and one that has an acceptable but also inferior alternative.

2. Build your analysis.

Why is one word right and the other almost right? Think of the impact word choice has on the audience in the context of the sentence, first in isolation and then in terms of the larger piece of writing the sentence comes from.

What is lost with the almost right word versus the right word?

3. Draft.

Now, considering your audience, draft your argument and analysis. You want to be careful to give them sufficient context about the text your sentence comes from so they can properly appreciate the argument and analysis to come.

4. Revise, edit, polish.

Each step of the way you should gain a little additional insight into your sentence, your appreciation for its “rightness” growing the more you consider it. I first read the sentence from “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never do Again” more than twenty years ago, and it took me fifteen years, including having assigned the essay in classes several times, before I fully recognized the genius of his use of “smells” and “smells like.” The repetition of “smells” actually causes the reader to smell twice, conjuring that specific suntan lotion scent in a more powerful way than a more syntactically straightforward version like “I have smelled suntan lotion spread over 21,000 pounds of hot flesh.”

REFLECT

How much time do you spend on your writing to find the right words? Or maybe a better question is, how much time do you have when you’re writing to be able to pursue the right word or even the almost right word as opposed to the probably good enough word?

A tough part about most writing is how it must be done in tight time windows that may not leave sufficient time for an idea to gel, and if the idea doesn’t gel, it’s difficult to start worrying about polishing a piece to the highest possible shine.

One way to gain additional time for revision, editing, and polishing is to try to start the drafting process earlier, to have more time later. (I know, easier said than done.)

This is a good opportunity to reflect on your writing process in this context and see if there are steps you can take to make more space for the parts of the process for which there never seem to be enough time.