Finding the right word can be difficult. While the average college graduate knows 20,000 to 25,000 words, knowing words and using them are different. In fact, only 1,000 words comprise 80% of all our day-to-day speech.

When thinking about words, there are two bits of advice. The first is to make sure that you are using the best words rather than those words that are most convenient. Here’s a passage from David L. Carroll’s A Manual of Writer’s Tricks:

Each word, as you are no doubt aware, even a word with many synonyms, has its own individual shade of meaning that sets it apart from other words of its kind. Knowledge of this semantic uniqueness—each word’s special color or flavor, if you wish to think of it in these terms—is an essential ingredient in good writing and should not be underestimated as a force for clear communication.

For example, take four words of similar definition: Courageous, valiant, intrepid, and dauntless. All, of course, have the same general meaning: brave. Yet each expresses a different subtlety of emphasis. Courageous is brave, yes, but it is a bravery most specifically of the spirit. A valiant person is brave too, but in a kind of unselfishly heroic way that adds a fine dignity to his or her endeavors. An intrepid person is boldly brave, inexorably brave, perhaps with a touch of the foolhearty thrown in as well. Dauntless persons may be valiant, may be intrepid; or they may not; we do not know for sure. What we do know is that they will never say die, and that their courage will persevere no matter what terrible obstacles stand in their way.

Four different words, four different meanings—and hence four different persons, four different situations, four different tales. Writing, when all is said and done, as Jonathan Swift once remarked, is really nothing more than “proper words in proper places.”

While thinking about your word choice, pay special mind to verbs. Remember that verbs are the action of a sentence, so if your action is always a stative verb (“to be”), then the action is mostly just standing around in a state of is, was, were, and being. Here’s a bit from William Zinsser’s On Writing Well that describes the verb choice a bit more:

Use active verbs unless there is no comfortable way to get around using a passive verb. The difference between an active verb style and a passive-verb style—in clarity and vigor—is the difference between life and death for a writer.

“Joe saw him” is strong. “He was seen by Joe” is weak. The first is short and precise; it leaves no doubt about who did what. The second is necessarily longer and it has an insipid quality: something was done by somebody to someone else. It’s also ambiguous. How often was he seen by Joe? Once? Every day? Once a week? A style that consists of passive constructions will sap the reader’s energy. Nobody ever quite knows what is being perpetrated by whom and on whom.

I use “perpetrated” because it’s the kind of word that passive-voice writers are fond of. They prefer long words of Latin origin to short Anglo-Saxon words—which compounds their trouble and makes their sentences still more glutinous. Short is better than long. Of the 701 words in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, a marvel of economy in itself, 505 are words of one syllable and 122 are words of two syllables.

Verbs are the most important of all your tools. They push the sentence forward and give it momentum. Active verbs push hard; passive verbs tug fitfully. Active verbs also enable us to visualize an activity because they require a pronoun (“he”), or a noun (“the boy”), or a person (“Mrs. Scott”) to put them in motion. Many verbs also carry in their imagery or in their sound a suggestion of what they mean: glitter, dazzle, twirl, beguile, scatter, swagger, poke, pamper, vex. Probably no other language has such a vast supply of verbs so bright with color. Don’t choose one that is dull or merely serviceable. Make active verbs activate your sentences, and avoid the kind that need an appended preposition to complete their work. Don’t set up a business that you can start or launch. Don’t say that the president of the company stepped down. Did he resign? Did he retire? Did he get fired? Be precise. Use precise verbs.

If you want to see how active verbs give vitality to the written word, don’t just go back to Hemingway or Thurber or Thoreau. I commend the King James Bible and William Shakespeare.