Dear friends,

We can be so timid with language when we speak. We worry about when to and not to use it, worry if we’re using it right, worry we’re using too many words to say something, worry what we’re saying isn’t coming across in the words we’re using. Each sentiment or feeling or thought we relay in language is, in essence, a translation, from the impulse to the interpretations latent in the language we select to portray the impulse.

I have spent over three years here in the English department studying wordsmithing as a function of storytelling, selecting for the purpose of an exercise or essay a particular lexical choice and deigning that the words used, themselves, are evidence of a particular meaning, knowing full well that scarcely do we humans say or write exactly what we mean.

This doesn’t have to be a dour prognosis. Really, when you speak, even if the words come out a little jumbled, most of the time people know what you mean. We shan’t let the spoonerism dissuade us from speaking—or checking for ticks.

Lith wove,

Sasha Rotko, EIC