now that's interesting we're getting a sneak peek at some of the texts that liz is sending
to her mom asking for money did you notice how liz decided to change some of her wording
she changed mom to mommy oh that's sweet i'd probably do the same thing and now she's saying
that she could use some money instead of saying that she needs some money did you also notice that
now she's saying that she rarely goes out instead of saying she never goes out what liz is doing is
paying attention to her word choice and how words can change the tone of what's being conveyed she's
looking for words that might soften her request and get her message across as clearly as possible
all right i did my homework and i practiced my dance nice whoa she's changing it again
okay i wonder what she's gonna do this time oh i see from did to tackled and from practiced to
perfected nice that is the power of word choice hey i think i'm getting ready to fork over some
money to her liz is clearly choosing words that have a better chance of getting what she wants
pony up okay okay i think she's about to yep there you go deleted
okay do you see all the changes that she made to her wording here there's a lot
bony up some dough versus i only need about twenty dollars that's a pretty big difference
when you think about it both of those phrases kind of mean the same thing but because of the word
choice the way those messages come across is so much different oh okay what's he going to say now
oh that's sweet i'm glad she didn't say something like sincerely yours liz
another text message this one's to her friend bethany let's see what liz says
hey beth just finished up my chores now waiting to get some money from my mom so we can go see
the movie i'll let you know soon later wow already a huge difference in rhetoric compared to the text
that she just sent her mom what differences do you notice for me the first thing that jumped
out was that she said hey instead of high means the same thing but it's a lot more
casual what about the way that she references doing her homework and practicing dance
what other kinds of differences in word choice and inferences can you make
just in looking at these simple examples between the text that liz is sending her mom and comparing
that to the text that she sends her friend bethany we could see that words clearly matter
authors know this too and so do journalists and people who write ads and speech writers
know it too they choose their words based on the results they want they think about what
they want their reader to feel or think about or picture in their minds and you can do it too
when you're writing a simple text message or even when you're writing an original
story you will learn so much more about the power of word choice through your assigned
reading and online practice sets well it's about time for me to leave now or should i say zoom off
maybe i'll mosey on out or slink away oh how about swagger down the street