What is word choice?

Word choice is an important part of writing. The words a writer chooses can have a massive impact on their writing.

This technique should be familiar to you as you will have studied it at 3rd level. Use this guide to revise and check your understanding.

Words are like ingredients: even a small change in the recipe can affect the finished dish.

• 'They had a warm laugh.'
• 'They had a hearty laugh.'

These two sentences give us the same information but the words have different effects:

• Warm suggests the laugh was friendly.
• Hearty suggests the laugh was wholesome and passionate.

Meaning

• Denotation is what a word literally means e.g. the skull is the bone structure in your head.
• Connotations are the ideas or feelings that a word might suggest e.g. a skull conjures up thoughts of fear, mortality and death.

For example, ‘slender’, ‘slim’, ‘thin’, ‘lean’ and ‘skinny’ may all have similar meanings but their connotations can be either negative or positive.