Poynter

One of the more curious things that Poynter.com suggested in it's "Writing Tools" section was to "choose words the average writer avoids, but that the average reader understands." This got me thinking of how I, myself, write. I tend to use my best friend (the thesaurus, or the Web site, Thesaurus.com) to come up with synonyms of words I commonly use. I try to avoid using the same word more than once in my pieces, because that way the writing seems more colorful and intelligent rather than boring and redundant. Also, avoiding jargon is another technique. I would never use a word a reader might not understand without possibly explaining it first. Jargon doesn't ever help. It falls along the lines of "filler" in my book.