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Vocabulary Considerations


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I've had some of my friends look over my essays and they don't understand some of the words I've used [e.g consummate (as an adjective), elucidate (I thought this was fairly common), post factum, etc], should I be concerned?! 

 

In all cases, they were chosen simply because they captured exactly what I wanted to express and were more concise than describing the same thing in other words. 

 

 

I'm thinking that med students and/or physicians reviewing the essays would have a fairly extensive vocabulary owing to their exposure to scientific literature and such but I wouldn't want to risk not getting my point across!

 

Thoughts? 

 

 

 

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I have the exact same issue...consider this one phrase (that I have since eliminated from my essay) that I wrote spontaneously pre-edit:

 

"wherein you are unable to humanly consider the rich profusion of perspectives available"

People that I trust are recommending I eliminate this "wordiness" as much as possible. This is my current mindset, and so that would be my recommendation. UofT has stated that no essay points go to "writing style," however bear in mind that the people reading these essays are human beings. If they can't understand what you're saying, you're toast!

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@mrs2016, if those words are hard on your friends, they need to read more.  Elucidate and consummate are quite common and usefully precise words and I wouldn't hesitate to use either.

 

@MathToMed, I think that sentence did need reworking.  It is quite lovely to read but I don't know that the big words make the point any better than a more simple sentence construction.  Who knows whether literary elegance/eloquence carry any weight, but when talking to the admin department over the summer, they said the vast majority of the focus is on content rather than style, but that point or bullet-form is definitely to be avoided.

 

Good luck to both of you!

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Literary elegance will probably work against you. It can get pretty vague and it probably looks bad if they think you're trying to impress them with big words. I'd try to keep it as simple as possible, if your mom doesn't understand what you're trying to say you're probably not being clear enough.

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Literary elegance will probably work against you. It can get pretty vague and it probably looks bad if they think you're trying to impress them with big words. I'd try to keep it as simple as possible, if your mom doesn't understand what you're trying to say you're probably not being clear enough.

 

Phew, in the last minute I opted to remove a "clever" introduction from one of my essays because it didn't substantiate the rest of the argument very much. The more time that passes, the more confident I feel that I've made the right choice.

 

To be fair, my mom wouldn't understand anyone's essay, as she can't speak english, haha.

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I prioritized content but at the same time, I just tried to think of what I would personally like to read: something that delivers mature and coherent content while doing so with grace and elegance.

 

In the end I chose to lose some of the more obscure terms as I realized that if the person isn't familiar with the diction, my thoughts would not be conveyed at all, or worse yet, misinterpreted!

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