WEBVTT

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We all know the scene: Dorothy closes her eyes,

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and repeats the Good Witch's mantra,

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"No coordinates exist like one's domicile,

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no coordinates exist like one's domicile,

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no coordinates exist like one's domicile."

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Only Dorothy doesn't say that. She says five one-syllable words,

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"There's no place like home."

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Each a word you probably learned in your first year of speaking,

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each perfectly concise.

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It's not that L. Frank Baum didn't have a thesaurus,

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it's that in most cases $10 words fail.

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Would Aerosmith have had a hit with

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"Ambulate This Direction?"

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Probably not.

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Would Patrick Henry have ignited a revolution by saying,

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"Provide me with liberty or bestow upon me fatality?"

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Unlikely.

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When it comes to words, bigger isn't always better.

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Ten-dollar words are rendered worthless if they're not understood.

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That's not to say every piece of literature

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should be written at a fourth-grade reading level,

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but it is important to know your audience.

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If you're a novelist, your audience is probably expecting

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300 pages of vivid descriptors.

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At the very least, they're expecting

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you won't use the same 50 words to fill those pages.

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But most of us don't have the luxury of a captive audience.

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We're competing against a whole world of distractions

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and we're fighting for space in an attention span

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that continues to shrink across generations.

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So get to the point already.

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Variety may be the spice of life, but brevity is its bread and butter.

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So when it comes to $10 words,

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save your money and buy a Scrabble board.