Purple Prose/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

** You've just indirectly answered your own question; you ''don't'' need to use more obscure words in most contexts, but how else are the readers going to know how smart you are?

** I think the word "egress" is cute and I like reading it... Personally, I think that ghettoizing thousands of nice English words just because they aren't widely known is waste of the richness of this language.

* This troper disagrees that it has much to do with literacy. Yes, literacy and vocabulary size are a factor, just like attention spans. But it's not just about that. Writing is meant to ''evoke images'' and do that ''effectively'', so that the reader can imagine things on the run and remain captivated by the story. Using long words when shorter words would do wrecks your pacing and is ''not'' effective. Showing off your vocabulary instead of using more common words is not effective, either. The reason those words are common is because we need them, and that is why they themselves, as words, are invisible and unobtrusive - much like the [[Said Bookism|"said" versus "stated/exclaimed/inquired"]] issue. Long and exotic words, on the other hand, are often unknown to the reader because their meaning is far more specific and limited than the author probably suspects (actual Purple Prose very often contains word that are blatantly falsely used). Even if it isn't, simply by bringing the word outside of its usual context you draw attention to it, make the prose obtrusive and distract from the story. Hence why "ear" is a better word for writing than "auditory organ" - the latter term has connotations that just get in the way.

* I appreciate that (as someone stated above) people's tolerance levels vary, but it does bug me that [[It Was a Dark And Stormy Night]] is always held up as an example of purple prose. It seems to me to be a pretty good and atmospheric piece of descriptive writing -- marred only by the fact that those first seven words have become a cliché.