The trick in all this is to keep from baffling your readers.
When I was a youngster, I was one of those weird kids that read the dictionary for fun. My folks bought me a big thick one when I was eight, and I liked reading dictionaries almost as much as watching TV.
When I got to college, I already had a monstrously large vocabulary. I was in a Broadcasting/Journalism program. I got into my first Broadcast Writing course, and the professor went ballistic on us after we turned in our first assignment. A significant segment of the class was barely literate. The prof, our department head, decided to give us the assignment of a) learning 5 new words per week. b) learning to use 5 new words in everyday conversation. For most, it was a major chore. It led to a row that finally caused the departure of the department head. Me? I loved the assignment. I took it to heart. I walked out of that program with a good command of the language.
What I can tell you all is it is not about just using obscure words. The trick is to use them along with other things to add depth and color to your writing without the reader knowing. Just there, I could have used "nuance," but a good number of you would have turned up your nose. Another trick is to throw in a word or two, but do it in such a way that the reader still feels like he is being talked to as an equal. It lifts the reader up. The whole point here is to get ideas across, and the best way to do that is to make the reader feel good about what you are trying to communicate. Big words that don't mean anything to the reader do not make that happen.
About 10 years out of college, I was working at a mutual fund company, running their portfolio management computers. The head of the bond funds called me in one day and gave me a key piece of advice. Bill sat me down and told me that I had one big flaw, and I needed to take care of it before I advanced in business. "You talk over everyone's head," he said. "You talk over my head, and I've been at it 40 years." Everyone knows you are smart, but if they can't understand you, you're not going anywhere. I took that one to heart, and started re-working the way I spoke.
About a decade later, I was talking to a young first shift supervisor. By this time, I had moved to manufacturing. He was leaving the company soon, and we were wishing each other well.
"You're the smartest man I ever knew," he said. "But you always talked to me as an equal. You never talked down to me, and you always made sure I understood." I told the fellow that this was the best thing I ever heard, briefly explaining the mutual fund manager. I knew I'd finally met his challenge.
So what is that huge vocabulary doing for me now? Strap in. I've got a story for you.
I used to work for a very large corporation. I was working at a small property owned by a minor division that was kind of a flea on the tail end of the dog. We got a new divisional president inflicted on us. The first thing he did was throw the whole business into turmoil by reorganizing everything. A year later, our side of the business had tanked. The division had tanked. The whole bloody thing had tanked. The president called for a conference call to huddle up.
He bloviated for a good long while. Most of it was pure hot air, but I kept hearing him use a word, "choiceful." Look it up. He was using it like it was a good thing and threw it out a couple dozen times in the course of an hour.
"We need to be choiceful going forward."
"I have taken this plan to the CEO, and he concurs with our being choiceful. He is being choiceful in this matter as well."
"Our organization is going to be choiceful beyond all other things."
etc.
I am not really sure what he meant by choiceful. I vaguely remembered it, and I was not satisfied until I got back to my desk and looked it up. I asked a few of my peers; they didn't know what he'd been saying either.
choiceful, adj: having an inability to make decisive choices. Syn. dithering.
I concluded:
1) He didn't know what he was talking about.
2) His bosses didn't know either.
3) We were all going down the tubes, because nobody knew what they were doing.
4) This guy's days were numbered, and he was taking us down with him.
In fairly short order, all this came to pass. I had seen it coming all from the overuse and misuse of one word.
You’re never gonna make Oracle with word salads like this that take a semester to read.
Just saying.
🦫
