$5 Words

February 28

Excruciating. Diffident. Crepuscular.

Even without adjust for inflation, those are $5 words. Expensive nouns and verbs that set us apart from the plebians.

Of course, words by themselves say very little. It’s the relationship between words where all the money is made. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a sentence is worth a thousand pictures, and just wait until you hear about paragraphs and pages.

Even the value of those paragraphs and pages pales in comparison to chapters and books—because the value of words, like ideas, comes not from their individual meaning, but from their relationship to other words.

There’s a reason one of the best (and most commons) forms of writing advice is to simplify. Focus on simple nouns and strong verbs, write short sentences, stick to commas and periods. Not just because not everyone knows what your $5 words mean, but because the complex word distracts people from what you were trying to say in the first place.

The value of ideas works the same way—the things you turn to words and sentences to find in the first place. There’s value in a narrow piece of information, but there’s exponentially more value in the relationship between multiple ideas.

If that sounds vague, here’s the simplest form: the more things you learn, the more value you get out of the future things you learn.

Which is also is your permission to learn literally anything and everything that interests you. Regardless of how relevant or irrelevant you currently believe it to be.

Morning Reading is a daily email to help center yourself, reflect, and prepare for the day. It’s sent with love from your friend, Zach in Austin, Texas. He even drew the logo himself.

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