Which words should we use more often?

Would ‘roborant’ beef up your news releases? Is ‘fastuous’ too haughty for a white paper? Or are the simple ‘you’ and ‘I’ enough?

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We at Ragan.com enjoy whacking hornets’ nests by advising writers which words and phrases they should avoid, stirring vital debate and global recriminations.

This time we asked fellow writers, communicators, and talkaholics on commuter trains which words we ought to use more often.

“In the words of Wittgenstein: ‘The limits of my language are the limits of my world,'” writer Steve Dempsey offers. “So a better vocabulary and subtler synonyms mean a more interesting outlook.”

He would know. A digital strategist with Slattery Communications in Dublin, he authors the blog Uncommon Parlance, which highlights words such as fastuous and slubberdegullion. This serves as “an antidote to the piss-poor persiflage like leverage, passion, solutions, etc. that seem to be coming out of people’s mouths with increased regularity.”

Sic ’em!

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