The Struggles of Using Synonyms

Every time I go to write something, I come across the same problem every single time. Synonyms. They are important, yet they are like a bump in the road every time you want to find another way to say something. I come across this issue very often in my blog posts. For example, right there in my last sentence, the words "come across" were what automatically came to mind when I was writing the sentence, then I realised I had just used those very words moments ago. And so the trek to find the right synonym begins. So instead of using the same words, as much as I think they fit really well in the sentence, I use something else. So for "come across" I might use "run into". And that's only if I'm lucky enough to find a synonym that suits what I'm trying to say.

Synonym: 

noun

A word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word or phrase in the same language.

It is because of synonyms that writing can be so dreadfully hard. You flow along fine for the first few sentences, then poof, you run into a word you've already used... Sometimes you can be lucky and find the perfect synonym, and other times it's like treading through mud, searching high and low for that perfect word to fill a sentence.

One of the words that gives me the most trouble, and I assume for many others as well, is beautiful. Yes there are other words, but I always find myself looking combing through that oh so very long list of similar words (unfortunately there is no perfect synonym for "word", which is why it will end up being a very prominent word in this blog), to find uncover something of a similar comparable nature. There just isn't much else like the word "beautiful", is there? Nothing else, no matter how hard one might try, really achieves the same effect! Of course it has a lot more options than "word" itself, but I still find it a challenging word to replace.

While writing this post I have searched for 15 synonyms (including the rest of this post), over 5 of which are failed attempts. Sometimes I find myself looking for synonyms every two sentences, and other times I don't end up needing that many. It depends on what I'm writing, I suppose, but it is one of those things that annoys me, because finding coming upon the perfect ( yet another word I struggle to replace) word can be quite a struggle! Even a synonym for the word "struggle" is hard to acquire when in a certain context. Basically, synonyms are the one thing that can make us spend more time writing something than we intended. I suppose we've gotten too comfortable with a set amount of words, so when in need of a synonym, we find it hard to let go of the word we originally wanted to use. And that is my experience with synonyms. Something quite necessary, yet we don't always use a big enough range of them.

-Sarah

The words that are striked through are examples of some of the words that I changed to synonyms today.