Number Twenty
Just Because It’s In The Dictionary, That Doesn’t Mean It’s Right
Back in the days when I did a little critiquing, I heard this all of the time. “Well, it’s in Webster, so it’s a real word.” And yes, I get the same crap from the kids when we play Scrabble.
For example, a couple of words that are in the dictionary are “F-Bomb” and “App”. These are just fine inside dialog (see Rule Number Nineteen as well), but in narrative, they are just plain wrong.
Why? Let me ‘splain somethin’ to you, Lucy…
A character saying something like, “…when my app went south, I almost dropped an F-bomb in the middle of the elevator…” kind of works. Maybe. Odds are, a real person would say, “…when the fucking phone broke I said, ‘what the fuck is this shit?'” On the other hand, in narrative, you would probably say something like, ‘…when his phone’s GPS failed, Joe blasphemed the gods in charge of high technology…’
Please be careful…there are a number of good reasons to avoid slang and other things that make their way into the dictionary these days and very few for using them.
One of the best reasons to avoid the slang in particular is how a book ages. If the narrative is full of hip slang, odds are in just a few years no one will understand the meanings. By way of example, look at the history of the word “geek”. Used in narrative, are you talking about someone who: (1) Bites the heads off of live animals; (2) Thinks Star Trek is real; (3) Works with computers; or (4) Is into video games and anime?
Like so many other things, the standards for what qualifies as a word have fallen.
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