English--Language of Variety

The English language has an extremely wide range of words for us to use. It is estimated that the current English vocabulary sums up to about 500,000 - 600,000 words. German comes close, but French, for example, only knows about 300,000 words. Now what does that mean?

One reason for this huge difference might be the way words are built. Where English or German may create one new word, French uses several existing words to name the same thing. On the other hand, English is a language full of synonyms and words with a similar yet slightly different meaning. In short, English is a paradise for writers because we have a huge variety of words at our fingertips. By choosing one word over another, similar word, we can express nuances of meaning which would otherwise be difficult to describe.

Example:

She looked at him./She stared at him.

Both verbs describe the same activity, but in the second sentence you get the impression that she is intensely looking at him, maybe in shock or surprise, whereas the first sentence could mean anything from a fleeting look over turning her head towards him in surprise because he spoke to watching him in his sleep. "Look" doesn't tell us the quality of the activity; "stare" conveys more information in a single word.

Synonyms can help to make a text varied since we don't need to use the same word over and over again.

Some examples:

eventually--finally--in the end--at last--ultimately
luckily--fortunately
however--though--but--yet

Depending on which word/word group we use, our sentence structure might also vary, which will ultimately make out text less monotonous and thus less boring to read.

If we know our vocabulary, it is so much easier to create images with our writing, and to make a text interesting to read, which should be our ultimate goals as writers (even the best story will suffer from bad writing, but with a good writing voice, even the most boring content can gain appeal).