Made-up Words
by Nick Wright
Don't make up your own language. If a word doesn't exist in a dictionary, how can other people understand its meaning?
Have you ever heard of—
- autoised
- billocked
- bloatware
- custodied
- impactful
- incentivizing
- jointery
- mentee
- rebranding
- subjectlets
- trilemma
- vaporware
Such coined words are the sign of a poor writer trying to impress the reader. Most readers just dismiss the message unless you write in familiar words they understand.
Use your spell-checker to find non-existent words. Add only proper nouns to your dictionary and you'll find it becomes a useful tool to pick up the worst examples of bad language.
