THREADS is a social media app I love, and yes, I know it’s still Meta; however, people are nicer to each other. And it has a great #bookthreads community.

Recently, someone posted something in Reddit that eventually worked its way to #bookthreads. I tried to find the original post but couldn’t. Quite possibly and considering the backlash, it may have been removed by the poster.

Basically, the post said that authors who use “big words” are ableist because their usage excludes people with language difficulties, like dyslexia, those who are neurodivergent, the undereducated, and the deaf (audiobooks).

I’m a writer and author, and I love words. I love words that especially reflect whatever emotion or situation I’m writing about. I do have a decent vocabulary (the words of a language), thanks to my father. He didn’t believe that the punishment (a penalty inflicted for an offense, fault, etc.) for childhood misbehavior (something bad) should be corporal (physical punishment like spanking inflicted on a child by an adult in authority) or punitive (inflicting punishment) but should be opportunities for education. If I didn’t clean my room, for example, he would open our massive Merriam-Webster Dictionary (a book or digital resource containing a selection of words and their meanings) to a random (without definite aim, reason, or pattern) page and have me memorize 10 words, which I had to repeat to him, along with their definitions.

As you can see, that previous paragraph is overly long because I wanted to disabuse you of the absurd notion that “big words” are bad.

Several commenters on that original post indicated “that’s what dictionaries are for,” which were in turn countered with, “I don’t want to interrupt my reading to look up a word.” Now, I could say that such an attitude, i.e., not wanting to interrupt reading to look up an unknown word, reflects the state of our public education system which has eliminated critical thinking over the past 50 years. However, that’s oversimplification (to make easier to the point of error, distortion, or misrepresentation). Somewhere along the line, expanding your intellect became a negative according to people who really don’t want you to think.

I read everything I could get my hands on from the time I learned to read, and I would often get tripped up by a word. What did I do? I lugged that Merriam-Webster into my room and looked it up. It still happens on occasion that a word is unfamiliar to me. I still have that heavy dictionary, but now I turn to dictionary.com to clear up the matter.

And using simpler words doesn’t help people with dyslexia. My ex was dyslexic, severely so, to the point where in elementary school he was thought to be intellectually challenged. A reading teacher, however, recognized that certain letter combinations were the problem, and she taught him to recognize them and substitute the correct word. He went on to be an air traffic controller, an airline transport pilot, and a senior executive in the federal government, and he also earned a master’s degree in public administration, all of which reading was essential. Oh, he always kept a dictionary handy to look up a word he had trouble with.

Now, it’s true that hearing-impaired people can’t use audiobooks, but they can read. Several years ago, some religious group knocked on my door and asked if I could “find it in my heart” to contribute to their project to supply the deaf with bibles. Puzzled, because I have a nephew who’s hearing impaired and who reads quite well, I asked what a “deaf bible” would look like. “All the words would be spelled out in fingerspelling.” I pointed out to them that hearing-impaired children learn to read like any other children and would be quite capable of picking up a King James Bible and reading it without a problem. They left rather abruptly.

I recently reviewed a manuscript for a neurodivergent writer in one of my writing groups. She used a lot of multi-syllabic words, correctly, I might add, which didn’t surprise me because when she reads at open mic nights, her work is fecking brilliant. I have no doubt she knows how to use a dictionary–if she needed one.

This whole controversy was manufactured, likely by a non-writer who came across a word they didn’t understand, had their ego bruised because of it, and struck back by using the ableist label.

Ableism is the “tendency to regard people with a disability as incomplete, diminished, or damaged and to measure the quality of life with a disability against a non-disabled standard.” In small words, you treat them as less than human beings because of their disability.

Academic papers, scientific studies, theses, dissertations are all nonfiction and have to use a specific lexicon that anyone in that field would recognize. In fiction, we authors spend an inordinate (excessive) amount of time searching for the “right words” that help to tell our stories. I remarked recently that if we dumbed down our word usage per this poster’s admonition, we’d end up with, “See Dick. See Jane. See Spot run.” The response was, “Those were great books.” Yes, of course, they were. When we were six.

If a four-syllable word advances my story, I’ll use it, just as I would a one-syllable word in the same context. However, I try to work my favorite word of all time, juxtaposition, into everything I write, and I won’t stop. Sorry. Not sorry.