The Use of Words

I recently read a brand-new thriller titled Relentless. It was difficult to finish the book, not due to a poor plot, as the plot was not that bad, but simply due to the inept use of words.

Obviously, the author has a healthy imagination, as demonstrated by the plot. However, when it came to putting his thoughts into sentences, strings of words, phrases, bits of dialogue, he fell flat on his face. He used words in ways that made me think: perhaps he doesn't know exactly what that word means. Maybe he's guessing at how it can be used. Or, worse, perhaps he doesn't really care about how it should be used. Even worse, his editors obviously don't care either.

To put it into metaphor, his writing is like an impressionistic painting - gauzy, slightly out of focus, blurred in spots so that lines and the edges of things aren't defined.

The scary thing is that this sort of writing is common today. It's as if people don't really understand the words and grammar that they use. I suppose relativism and entropy have had their way.

One of the worst offenders these days is simply how young people talk (I shudder to think of seeing their writing). As far as I can tell, they possess vocabularies of about two hundred words, and their grip on these two hundred is shaky at best.

"What up, yo?"