You shouldn't use a "big" or "fancy" word when there is a more commonplace word that means the same thing, but you may be forced to use a big word every once in a while.
A phrasing of a structure of feeling that I didn't really know I had, something so beautifully or hauntingly stated that I used to copy the words longhand in a commonplace book when I was in high school and college.
Suppose a national leader calls for the persecution a man who has not yet been charged with any crime -- as for example Vice President Biden did when he described Julian Assange as a "high-tech terrorist" -- and suppose the leader does so in a pleasant voice and using commonplace words.
We eliminated a few proper names and some commonplace words that were apparently clicked inadvertently.
These banal, commonplace words might well have been spoken about George W. Bush when he was president, and could, though with somewhat less likelihood, be spoken today about President Barack Obama.
In order to act, in order to change much of anything, you first need to give that world the names, the labels, it deserves, and they may not be "election" or "democracy" or so many of the other commonplace words of our past and our present moment.
Spend time listening to other people, to learn what they really mean underneath their commonplace words.
Although the word itself has become a commonplace in the arts, honest discussion about diversity presents opportunities for creating unrealistic expectations and for giving or taking offense.
But Munro is now 81, and told the New Yorker last year she's "losing names or words in a commonplace way", and that "this time, I think it's for real".
I'm eighty-one, losing names or words in a commonplace way, so… Though each of the stories in "Dear Life" has an openness — even a forgiving quality — the pile-up of regret and disorientation in your characters' lives adds up to a slightly bitter conclusion.
