Disadvantages of Long Words.

(1) Difficulty of Perceiving them.—Another quality of words which deserves attention in their selection is length. Whether addressed to the eye or to the ear, long words require more effort to present them to the mind for cognition than short ones. If they are ad¬dressed to the eye, the mind must pass through a process of syllabication, in order to distinguish them from other forms but slightly different. This is, doubtless, an almost unconscious process with those who are accus¬tomed to read much, but it is illustrated in the efforts of those who are beginning. Two words very nearly alike can be distinguished only by attention to the dif¬ferentiating letter or letters, and this attention is necessary upon each syllable. If the word is addressed to the ear, the same is true, with only a slight differ¬ence. Every polysyllabic word has one primary accent which gives unity to the word, forcing upon the atten¬tion by a vocal stress one syllable which serves as a nucleus around which other syllables hang as mere appendages. The syllables which are subordinate in
sound are not always subordinate in sense. In the word demOnetrate, the specific meaning is determined, not by the accented syllable, but by a single letter in the very subordinate syllable de, and is distinguished from that of remonstrate only by the initial letter, d, instead of r. Most polysyllabic words have several phonetic analogues from which they are distinguished only by a subordinate syllable. It is evident, there¬fore, that they do not economize the power of percep¬tion as much as short words.
(2) Difficulty of Remembering them.—They often
prove too much for the memory also, and thus render it impossible for the other interpreting powers to act, since there is nothing definite for them to act upon. Every one is sensible of this in reading, or in listening to a speech. We may overcome the difficulties pre¬sented to the mind by one or two long words in a sen¬tence, but when they are piled up in Johnsonian pro¬fusion, although we may be familiar with each separate word, in their aggregate they are too heavy for the mind to carry ; they drop out one by one in the progress of the sentence, and at its close we are unable to say whether the proposition is true or false.
Category:Writing techniques