word choices

[kaigou]

I was writing a reply recently and stumbled at a description. "Straightforward," I started to type, then paused, backed up, and pondered for a bit before coming up with "forthright". When rereading before hitting the post button, it occurred to me that I do this rather often, with the following words and phrases, and use alternates instead.

straight up => right out
straighten out => clear up, set right
go straight => go forward
setting someone straight => correcting, telling clearly
a straight answer => succinct answer
straight through => all the way through
___ straight [period of time] => ___ unbroken [time], ___ uninterrupted [time]

They're not all perfect synonyms, and sometimes I can see I've done a bit of a sidestep around my kneecap to get to my elbow, just to avoid the word. It's not like I'm trying to be PC, only that I think I took it to heart the joke a gay friend used to make, when I was in college: "never go straight, go crooked." (Though if feeling cranky, he'd say, "don't go straight, get bent.")

My sensitivity to the word and its connotations means I'm equally sensitive to reading the word in anyone else's writing. Not that I judge when I see it, only that I think, here is someone not sensitive to that, the way I am, sort of like when you're surprised that someone doesn't get hay fever like you. Neither good nor bad, just a bit of ah 'oh' observation. If someone else also avoids the word... that's harder to assess, because unless it's a really obvious one (where 'straight' would be kind of the default term, so to speak), there are different ways to say just about anything, so the absence isn't proof of anything.

But am I the only one who goes out of the way to avoid certain, specific words? And not even words that necessarily politically loaded, either -- because I also avoid 'overt' and 'sublime', whenever I can.

Comments

[ct]

I try to avoid alright/all right. No matter which way I spell it, it looks wrong.

[kaigou]

Ahaha, that's a combination I find myself sometimes seeing as two different things. "All right" seems to be linked to multiples/more-than-one, but if it's singular, then it's "alright"... and that's probably a completely idiosyncratic and personal way to read the words, eh?

[dunmurderin]

A friend of mine says 'go gaily forward' instead of 'go straight'.

[kaigou]

I'm stealing that! ...if that's okay with you. A much more cheerful way to put it, than simply "go forward" (or even the alternate, "keep going").

[dunmurderin]

Sure!

[(Anonymous)]

As left handed person aware of the long history of right=correct left=sinster
I got a chuckle out of your subsitute phrases. To mangle Tom Lehrer 'When correctly viewed, everything is rude.'.

Kat

[kaigou]

Actually, I tend to avoid using "right" to mean "correct" because of the times that's gotten me, or the driver, completely lost. Now it's just habit to say "correct" instead of "right", just like it's habit to say "go forward" instead of "go straight".

[benbenberi]

The problem with "go forward" is that you can make turns & bends while still going forward, and end up in the wrong place totally lost, while "go straight," used in a directional sense, is usually unambiguous. (Except sometimes in places where the roads are bendy and intersect at odd angles.)

[nagasvoice]

I have several friends who will say that when giving directions in the car. It does make you more aware of the cliche use of "straight." Plus, somehow it makes you giggle when they say it like that, and that's always a good thing on a road trip.
I have noticed I use some words or phrases too much, and often that's an artifact of adopting some kind of "standard image" or stereotypic idea about what is happening in a scene. It's quicker to use a quickie phrase everybody gets easily, instead of reinventing language all the time, but repeating it too often is a problem.
The other maddening thing I find in my own editing is a repeated use of a word in two *different* meanings of the same word, close enough to rest within a few paragraphs of each other. The kind of word, like gaily, which jumps out at you as unusual enough that repeated use looks weird. Like, it can only be used once in a thousand words, at least. I'm forced to recast both sentences because in each sentence alone they are the best choice, and sometimes really the only choice, to use there. It may be my subconscious at play, but it drives me crazy!

[kaigou]

There are some authors I've read who have certain words that... I don't know, make me think the word popped up on their word-of-the-day calendar while they were working on the draft. And then the word shows up in the next chapter, and the next, and the next. We're talking SAT, fifty-cent words here. They're awfully noticeable, and by the sixth time, I just want to email the author and ask if s/he could possibly find a different word for instance #7. Sheesh.

Some words are like fancy spices. Use sparingly, or not at all.

[kraehe.livejournal.com]

Someone recently told me that I was the only person they knew who could get away with using the term "schadenfreude". Perhaps because I preceded it with "massive"...

[pixel]

My ex taught me that one, and while I have shortened it to 'go forward' to avoid having more discussions than I want with certain people, I can't make myself say 'go straight' any more.

[christeos-pir.livejournal.com]

Just remember: Using "all walks of life" or "fast and furious" means you'll be making your own dinner for a week.

[kaigou]

I'll volunteer to sleep in the garage, too, if such cliched phrases pass my lips or my keyboard.

[annotated_em]

I'm working on rooting out the ableist stuff in my own language, which is sort of related to this, and is really difficult!

But that's kind of tangential to this. The word that I tend to be kind of careful with is hard. *wry* I, uh. Have spent too much time writing boyslash to not be careful with that one.

[kaigou]

Ahahaha, when I see 'hard' in a sentence, I definitely get a Beavis moment. "The author said hard. Uhuhuhuhuhuh."

I am such a twelve-year-old, sometimes.

[soukup]

I have a related problem: some of my characters are so innocent about certain facts/experiences that they'll say the most suggestive things without even noticing. Common trouble spots are spanking, bending over, being tied up, the word "anal," etc. I think my favourite recently was when one of my guys referred to himself (luckily only in his mind) as someone's "whipping boy." <3

Did you ever read anything by Tom Stoppard? For some reason this topic makes me think of his stuff, and especially of his adorable play Arcadia.

[kaigou]

Stoppard is definitely good at the unintended (by the character) double meanings. What's gotten me at times is writing something and finding out afterwards from a reader that there's another way to view the phrase... that I never even realized myself. If we're lucky, though, it's written off as intentional on the author's part, and a sign of the character being naive.

Me: YEAH. Because I totally MEANT to do that!

[leorising]

I can honestly say I've never given the idiomatic or non-idiomatic use of the word "straight" a single, solitary, damned thought. And while I realize you're not trying to convert me, I have to say it strikes me as going a bit too far -- like calling a manhole a "personhole", even though the "man" part comes from "manos".

Sorry if I'm perceived as anti-gay because I use the term "straightforward", but oh well... *shrugs*