Since the name of this blog is WORDS ON THE LINE and I've already written plenty about sentences here over the past 16 years, I thought it was time to write about words. Here is the first sentence in a June 11, 2021 Reuters article "Wall Street Ekes Out Gains to Close a Languid Week" by Stephen Culp:
U.S. stocks closed modestly higher at the end of a torpid week marked with few market-moving catalysts and persistent concerns over whether current inflation spikes could linger and cause the U.S. Federal Reserve to tighten its dovish policy sooner than expected.
The title uses languid and the first sentence torpid instead of the more familiar lethargic, slow-moving, sluggish, or stagnant. Mr. Culp had other choices as well. While plain language advocates may prefer a commonly used word, we must remember that plain language also means reader-appropriate language. The audience of stock market articles tends to be highly educated and well-read, so the writer selected wisely, not to mention his choice of catalysts, a crossover word from chemistry to popular culture, and dovish, whose contextual roots are in politics. Here is a case of the writer trusting his audience's frames of reference.
