The Severely Limited Vocabulary of the Current Generation

[Tempus]

When communicating solely through text, a greater vocabulary, to me, can be analogous to using different tones of voice during speech. It can allow for a nuance in expression that, while not exclusive to choice in diction, is nonetheless nice to have. Also, having a large pool of words to draw on can enable more economical writing - provided your audience understands what the hell you're saying. As apophenia said, you can find yourself needing to learn how to make do with less if your audience isn't familiar with the words you're using. I will admit some minor frustration in having to use a sentence where a single word could suffice or having to forgo precision in favour of a simpler, but more vague word choice. I guess at the end of the day I still have control over my bowels, so I can't complain.

• *Tempus is hyper-conscious of misspelling, misgrammaring, or otherwise fucking up his post but is too sleep deprived to be able to reliably assess his own post.

Actually, I've decided my post isn't quite over yet, so sit back down. A large vocabulary, as I've already said, is good for expression. But, again as already said, it isn't necessary for it. In a work like a novel, themes, symbols, form, repetition, juxtaposition, and so on, can all be used to express complex things succinctly and / or uniquely. The green light at the dock in The Great Gatsby comes to mind. That was a symbol which carried greater meaning without the need for fancy expressive words. Then again, all words are symbols, I guess. So maybe symbols. Yeah. I'm not sure where I'm going with this. If I stop writing I'm going to have to confront the fact that it's 5am and I don't know whether I can deal with that right now. You know, I recently learned how to correctly use "have" and "has". I was writing and then bam, suddenly something didn't sound right. "'Have' or 'has'?", I asked myself. Chocolate or vanilla? To be or not be? You've probably just realised I'm wasting your time. But I'm not going to stop here, oh no. I'll just keep rambling on, like some tolling bell of doom, tolling until your final days, tolling every time it gets to the good part in that song you like, tolling like some unholy metronome, tolling like that shrill triangle you played in music class at school because all the good instruments were taken, tolling like that awful seat belt warning in new cars that tries to preserve the lives of careless people, tolling like some anvil of a forgotten age, tolling like that microwave of yours commanding you to bath your meagre frozen dinner in its non-ionising radiation, tolling like that anticipatory trill after dialling a telephone number you'd really prefer not to dial, tolling - oh my, how I'll fucking toll my ass off.