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Welcome to before breakfast, a production of iHeart radio. Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the before breakfast podcast. Today's tip is to find a better word.

When you choose the right word, that word can do more heavy lifting than if you go with the first word you think of.

This week I am sharing some of my favorite writing tips. Even if you don't write for a living, you might write reports or emails or articles for industry publications.

Certain strategies can help make your writing more compelling and clear.

Writing first drafts is hard. We just need to get the ideas down. But once you have done that, you can go through and make the writing better.

Earlier this week we talked about cutting words. If you aim to cut 10 to 15% off your word count, you will need to weigh each word and sentence.

Doing so will help you think through the best way to say what you need to say. Part of that is choosing words that do a lot of work.

Rather than having someone run very quickly, you have them sprint or dash or race. These words are all a little different, but one is likely closer to the right word.

Even if you don't save on your word count, you might get closer to what you are trying to say.

It is different to sob than to cry or to whimper or to whale. It is different to linger versus lulligag.

Of course it is not always easy to come up with the right word off the top of your head.

So if you find yourself stabbing around trying to come up with the right one, do this. Look the word you did use up in the dictionary.

No, not the thesaurus. At thesaurus lists lots of words with similar meanings, but does not always make clear which words have different connotations or mean slightly different things.

I took a writing class in college where the professor, John McFee, mentioned that he preferred to use the dictionary to find better words.

That's because the dictionary is trying to help you find the precise meaning of something.

So the various words suggested or mentioned are more likely to be close to the meaning you desire.

It doesn't take long to do this and you don't have to do it for every word.

But whenever you see a word in your writing that feels tired or imprecise or cliched, find a better one.

See if you can find one with a more exact meaning and the right connotation.

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