700 Common Words Exercise No. 2
“Words, words, words,” said a character in a
well-known play. So much was said, so little done. In a way, our life is made
is made up of words. It is through words that we give expression to our ideas
and through words that we can keep in touch with other people. We may write the
words for others to read or we may speak the words for others to hear, but in
either case it is through words that we have been able to pass on to others the
thoughts that are in our minds. Are words quite necessary to a highly developed
state of thought? Are they necessary for the development of man to a state of
increased knowledge and comfort? Can we, indeed, thin without words? Much has
been said and written on this last point, and some writers are quick to point
out that we can think in pictures without the use of words. Others believe that
our thoughts are dependent upon words that we do not think of the thing itself
but of the words representing the thing. Certainly, if we stop at any moment
and ask: What was I thinking of then? We find that we have been using words in
our thoughts. The use of words is one great difference that sets man apart from
other animals. It is true that most living things seem to use sounds of some
sort in their life with one another but they do not use language as man does.
So far as we can judge from historical records, man continued in a way early
state of development until he began to speak.
With the use of words he developed more quickly, and when he learned to
write down the words his development increased at a very great rate. The
written word seems necessary for the wide development of a people. With the
written words ideas can be passed on quickly and knowledge, won by experience and
hard work, can be passed on to others who can then use the knowledge for their
own purposes. At first, the written word could be used only by a few as it was
carefully and beautifully written by hand, and one copy only existed of each
piece of writing. Now, however, thousands of copies of a book can be turned out
in a very short time, and the thoughts and ideas of one man can be read by
millions. This has its dangers, of course, as well as its advantages for it may
happen and we have seen it happen that a person with a powerful use of words
can influence millions of people in the direction he desires. For words are
powerful things: people are moved to action by words, they are moved to action
by the ideas expressed in words. We know that in political life the man who is
most successful is generally the man with the power to speak well, to use words
in a way that influences people to believe what he says. We know that in
business the best salesman is the one who can overcome his customers with
words, who can make them believe that what he has to sell is better than what
other people have to sell. The successful writer is not always the one who
tells the bet story but the one who can best use words to express his ideas and
the feelings of his characters. Nor are shorthand writers any less dependent
upon words. Shorthand writers depend upon words for their very existence as
shorthand writers, for without words there is not shorthand in the sense in
which we understand it. Even the old picture writing was a form of shorthand,
for one picture had to express quite a long story. The modern shorthand writer
is like the successful story writer, the successful salesman, the successful
man in political life: he depends for his success upon his knowledge of words,
and the use he makes of his knowledge. The successful shorthand writer must
understand be able to use a very great number of words, and he must know the
word used in a very wide field of subjects. For the shorthand writer life is
indeed a matter of “words, words, words!
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