A column on writing from Editor & Publisher March 14, 1981.

Context clues (B)

Using hard words

Editor's note: Examples changed to reflect current terminology.

All readers have a larger vocabulary for reading than for speaking. Even the comics use words that are rarely said aloud.

In one strip, Tiger bosses his younger brother, "Mom says get ready for a bath." As the boy goes by with six toy boats in hand, Tiger says, "I said a bath, not a regatta." If the (young) reader does not know regatta, the picture teaches the word.

Whenever a picture can teach a word, that word is usually very simple, that is, simple in concept. There surely are pictures worth a thousand words, but the news pictures we run seem to require a thousand words of explanation every day for days -- a dead boxer, a volcano eruption, Three Mile Island accident.

As the subjects we cover become more complex, so does the vocabulary. This technical language is beyond the reading pool of most readers. It must be made continually clear.

For example, the term prime rate has been on Page One for years. Yet no economics story can run without defining it yet again and at once: "The prime rate, which is the interest rate banks charge their best corporate customers...."

Context clues to explain unfamiliar terms may be planted in several ways. Here are the six most common. Use them for complex as well as technical or jargon words.

1. Define the word as in a dictionary, using is or are.
   "The basic money supply known as M1 is the money commonly used for payment, basically currency (M0), or cash, and checking deposits."
   The words after is/are define the term before is/are.
    
   
2. Give the definition next to the term, in a phrase set off by commas, dashes, or parentheses.
   "The basic money supply known as M2, which is M1 plus close substitutes for money, is a key economic indicator used to forecast inflation."
   That set of commas could be dashes or parentheses.
    
   
3. Define the word nearby, even earlier.
   "Heartstopping beauty graced each and every face, so pulchritude did not decide the contest."
    
   
4. Give familiar examples of the term.
   "For a salad for six, start with four cups of raw leafy vegetables, such as lettuce, spinach, and endive."
   All vegetables have leaves, so new cooks may not be familiar with the term.
   The difference between great cookbooks and lesser ones is usually the amount of defining. Top food writers assume nothing, often writing, "Simmer for 10 minutes (just below the boiling point)." They may even add, "Do not permit the bubbles to break on the surface of the water."
    
   
5. Set up a comparison clue.
   "Like the sheriff before him, a reserved man who spoke but little, the new sherif is also taciturn."
    
   
6. Set up a contrast clue.
   "Unlike the sheriff before him, a reserved man who spoke but little, the new sheriff is loquacious."
   Only the sheriff will, or will need to, look it up.

See also #4: Context clues (A): Precision without apology.

Ethel Grodzins Romm is a writer and editor currently living in New York City. She is the author of The Open Conspiracy: What America's Angry Generation is Saying (review) (auction with cover), several of the Strategies in Reading workbook series and others. She appeared in the film Paranormal: Science or Pseudoscience? She has written columns on language for Editor & Publisher, The American Bar Association Journal and many others. She is currently working on a book on management.