Words

There are 171,476 words in the English dictionary.

(I took one Friday afternoon to count them all… just kidding, ask Google, he’s the one that told me).

I still find it amazing how the number really doesn’t change (unless these young-ins keep making up weird words) but new sentences are being formed to write books, songs, poems, stories, ideas every day. So many new things surfacing to the world with just those 171,476 words.

• Those sentences, have they been written before? I don’t think so.

• These words, have they been used before? Oh absolutely.

The thing about words is people use them to write so much yet say so little. And still others want to use so little when they could say so much.

Our generation has little appreciation for words today. They want a short phrase they can easily tweet or post as a caption and it takes away the richness of description. We have resorted to video and even that has taken away our attention span. How many times have you skipped someone’s IG story because those 15 seconds were too long for your interest? Granted, some things may not be worth 15 seconds of our time which is understandable, but it has forced the creator to lessen the quality of what they produce to fit within our viewer’s attention span.

There are moments when I’ve just had so much to write and so many things to say, but knowing very few people enjoy reading, it creates a tendency in me to try and get my message across in as few words as possible so more people can read it.

The longer the post the faster one scrolls past it. If the image is uninteresting, the words of that post will not be given a second thought. People want aesthetics not opinions.

Be honest for a second, as you are scrolling through social media and you see a post that doesn’t have an appealing picture but like 3 paragraphs under it; you quickly scroll past it. Maybe you’ll read the first line or so but no further. If it’s an influencer you like or a close friend then yea, you may read it. But anyone else and you don’t give it a second glance.

Certain styles of writing don’t connect with most because most have not developed the true art that is reading. Writing is not the only art involved with words. The reader also carries the other half of the art component because of how they understand what the writer was trying to say. What is the point of an author if no one reads their work? That is why so many things can go over people’s heads while another person can instantly grasp the idea. There, in fact, is the art. Why is it that so many famous authors of old and writers only came to be well known after their death? The readers in their time did not have the developed mindset to understand the heart of the writer. Today, we are reading less and less because media has taken such a majority of our time. We have audio books because actually reading takes too much time. Bookworms are nerds. Bookstores are for aesthetics. Motion picture is dominating.

It’s 1:02 in the morning and I’m avoiding washing dishes and just wanting to go to bed. Welcome to the rabbit whole of my brain where I’m just writing things down with no particular direction.