Controlling Your Own Style
Introduced| English |
|---|
| register/ˈredʒɪstə/ |
The impressive word is rarely the right one
- Under exam pressure, students reach for vocabulary that sounds advanced.
- A slightly wrong impressive word reads as a loss of control; an exactly right ordinary one does not.
- Examiners reward control, and control is visible in accuracy, not in range.
A thesaurus can lend you a grand word; it cannot promise that word knows your sentence.
Examiners reward control, which is visible in...
An impressive word used slightly wrongly reads as a loss of control.
Choosing your own words
- Prefer the word that is exactly right to the word that is impressive.
- Where a modifier carries a perspective you do not intend, replace it with a neutral one.
- Where you do intend the perspective, keep the loaded word — and be able to defend it.
Prefer the word that is exactly ____ to the word that is impressive.
Accuracy is what shows control; range on its own does not.
Consistency of register
- A register 语域 is the formality level a text maintains.
- Sliding between formal and casual without a reason reads as carelessness.
- A deliberate shift, at a point where the argument turns, reads as control — which is the opposite.
Control or loss of control?
Sort each choice by what it shows an examiner.
Any change of register within an essay reads as carelessness.
A deliberate shift where the argument turns reads as control; a random one reads as carelessness.
Reaching for advanced vocabulary is a risk, not a strategy. An impressive word used slightly wrongly is more visible than a plain word used exactly — and what an examiner is reading for is control.
Select all the places this lesson says a deliberate register shift makes sense.
A shift at every paragraph break is random, not deliberate.
Where to shift deliberately
- Moving from stating your position to conceding part of an opposing one is a natural place to shift tone.
- So is moving from the general case to a single concrete instance.
- Both are argument turns, which is what makes the shift readable rather than random.
Match each check to its question.
Each check asks whether a choice was made or merely happened.
A style check
- Circle every word you would not use in conversation. Is each one exactly right?
- Find every place your register changes. Does the argument turn there?
- Any word or shift that fails its question is costing you control, not adding to it.
"The committee's response was a fulsome endorsement." Fulsome means excessive and insincere, so the sentence says the opposite of what the writer intended. A reader who knows the word now doubts everything else in the paragraph.
Examiners reward control, which is visible in accuracy rather than range. Prefer the exactly right word, keep a consistent register, and shift it only where the argument turns. Check every unusual word and every register change against its purpose.