7 Novels to Read for a Better Vocabulary

People read for a variety of reasons: entertainment, knowledge, understanding. There’s no better way to gain a larger vocabulary than by reading novels of all types and genres. Your high school teachers might have considered the classics the only true literature with educational value, but there are plenty of modern tales that can help you pick up new words to fling around at cocktail parties.

Here are seven novels, both classic and modern, that will grant you a bigger vocabulary. You may want to keep a dictionary on hand while reading!

The Count of Monte Cristo

Alexandre Dumas’ famous adventure novel explores the classic, timeless themes of betrayal, hope, and vengeance, as well as the consequences of those actions. It’s also a great novel for vocabulary purposes — tossing around words like ardent, prodigious, cosmopolite, and apoplexy. Despite this, it’s not a difficult read, making the tale a great place to start for someone working to expand their vocabulary.

Shakespearean Plays

Okay, maybe this is cheating a bit. If you only read one of Shakespeare’s plays, read Hamlet. Many of the references in modern literature are based off the works of the Bard, and the English language, itself, owes much to Shakespeare.

Did you know he invented quite a few of the words used in everyday language?

Love in the Time of Cholera

This modern love story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez was originally written in Spanish, but loses none of its beauty in translation. Telling the story of two lovers separated by distance and circumstance, the book includes words admirable for their sheer beauty — as well as phrases reminiscent of the liquidity of Spanish.

Game of Thrones

The series’ growing popularity is mainly due to the television adaptation. However, the written Game of Thrones far surpasses the silver screen version – not only is the tale more than 1,000 pages long, but George R.R. Martin’s talent with language is something to be admired. Besides using terms that hark back to Middle English, Martin describes the world of Westeros in such detail that all authors can learn a bit about the use of adjectives and adverbs.

Gulliver’s Travels

Jonathan Swift’s scathing satirical work about elitist culture and the Catholic church is one of the greatest novels ever written. Learn for yourself who the Lilliputians and Yahoos are, as well as the meaning of such words as lingua franca, inure, demesne, and declivity.

Ulysses

One of James Joyce’s greatest works, Ulysses is a massive tome. Clocking in at 265,000 words in length, with 30,030 unique words, it is considered one of the most difficult novels in existence to read. However, it is also ranked in the topic 100 of the greatest English novels of all time. Joyce takes great pleasure in using words such as bedraggle, omphalos, and ineluctable. The length of the novel is compounded by the fact readers must keep a dictionary and a notebook beside them. Perhaps the best choice for vocabulary expansion of any novel on this list, Ulysses will challenge even the most veteran of readers.

Slaughterhouse Five

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.” The most famous line from Vonnegut’s ultimate work succinctly wraps up the mood and theme of the novel. A tragic examination of the life of a soldier in World War II, Slaughterhouse Five challenges readers to deeply examine their preconceptions of war and life. Using words such as unmitigated, grotesque, and magnanimity, the vocabulary of Slaughterhouse Five is of a more modern in origin.

If you want to gain a bigger vocabulary, whether for GRE study or simply for conversational usage, there’s no better way than to read. There are so many novels that can help you; don’t feel like you have to only read the classics!

What is your favorite word, and where did you learn it?

Prepositions of Direction

Prepositions of direction give readers a sense of place or location. The following chart lists different prepositions of direction, their definitions, and examples.

Preposition	Meaning	Example
above	higher relative to something else	The milk is above the soda in the refrigerator.
across	on the other side of	My friend lives across the street from me.
along	beside	The ducks are eating along the river.
among	within a group	The girl was sitting among her friends.
around	in a circular way	They told stories around the campfire.
at	indicates a particular point	Meet me at the stop sign.
behind	at the back of	The employees parked behind the store.
below	lower relative to something else	I hung the poster below the mirror.
beside	next to	Come stand beside me.
close to	near	The flowers are close to the produce section.
over	above	The spices are over the sink.
through	from one point to the next	The river runs through the woods.
toward	in the direction of	The man started walking toward the exit.
up	from low to high	The store is right up the road.
down	from high to low	The boy tumbled down the hill.
between	in the space separating two things	The ring fell between the couch cushions.
by	near	The thrift store is by the church.
inside/in	within	Have you ever been inside an abandoned building?
near	close by	The movie theater is by the interstate.
next to	beside	The library is next to the post office.
on	touching something	Put the mail on the table.
onto	moving on top of something	The dog climbed onto the bed.
off	away from	Don’t jump off that wall.
past	on the farther side of	She drove right past the house.
under	below something	The cat slept under the bed.

Some prepositions are trickier than others. For example, it’s not so logical to be on a bus or a train or a plane rather than in one, yet that’s the way we say it. While you are on the plane (i.e., inside the plane), there is also a logo on the plane, and two wings on the plane, though they’re not inside with you. When in doubt about how to use a specific preposition, look up the proper term in a dictionary.

Not-So-Sweet 16: Emoji Overload vs. The One-Word Line

Welcome to the Not-So-Sweet 16 round of March MADness! In our quest to find the most annoying work pet peeve, we’ve had some real battles. Some were obvious choices, while others were more evenly matched. And now, we’re out to determine the winners of each of our “conferences:” chat, email, phone calls, and old-fashioned, in-person talking. Which horrible habit will reign supreme?

Emoji Overload:

��������☠️ These people like to send a string of seemingly useless emojis in work chat, especially in public channels. While they may think it’s cute, it actually shows they have nothing to say.

The One-Word Line:

This Chat Habit Is Annoying. When you receive one word per line over chat, it takes longer to read and is 100 times more irritating.

Beyoncé Was Wrong About This Word

If you’ve ever played Dungeons & Dragons or listened to Destiny’s Child, chances are likely that you have heard the words bugbear and bugaboo. For the D&D players of the world, a bugbear is a hairy, giant-like goblin. For Destiny’s Child fans, a bugaboo is a particularly annoying boy who just won’t stop calling you (or paging you, or showing up to your house unannounced). These definitions aren’t exactly what the words were used for back when they first came into existence during the Middle Ages. In fact, both bugbear and bugaboo have interesting backstories that involve our childhood nemesis, the bogeyman.

Bugbear

1. An ongoing problem; a recurring obstacle or adversity.
2. A source of dread; resentment; or irritation
3. An imaginary creature meant to inspire fear in children.

Though linguists can’t be certain on exactly where the word bogey originated, they all agree that it originally existed as a proper name for the Devil. Scary, right? It’s no wonder, then, that parents began telling their children stories of the bogeyman coming to get them when they didn’t do their chores or go to bed on time or whatever it is that children got reprimanded for in the Middle Ages. At some point, the rhetoric around the bogeyman changed, and instead of becoming a creature that would take children who didn’t go to bed on time, it became the bugbear who would get you if you tried to sneak out at night. As the word might suggest, a bugbear was a bear-like imaginary creature also meant to incite fear in children (and teens). Today, a bugbear isn’t so much a creepy creature or giant-like goblin but a word that represents an ongoing problem; a recurring obstacle or adversity. Some might consider a bugbear to be getting politicians to agree on legislation for public school funding, for example. Alternatively, a bugbear can represent a source of dread, resentment, or irritation. Many Americans, for example, consider doing their taxes a real bugbear.

Bugaboo

1. An imaginary object of fear
2. Something that causes fear or distress out of proportion to its importance

While bugbear is a popular term in Europe, in North America the more popular word is bugaboo and usually refers to a dreadful imaginary object than a creature. In this instance, it turns out that Destiny’s Child got it wrong. When you think about it, that guy who just won’t stop calling you is more of a bugbear than a bugaboo—the guy the girls are singing about is definitely real. If we took Destiny’s Child’s use of bugaboo in the literal sense, it seems like Beyoncé et al. are totally overreacting to the bogeyman instead of protecting their very important personal spaces. Also, once you learn the definition of bugaboo, it makes it hard to look at that cute line of baby accessories that also bears the name quite the same way. Is strolling your baby suddenly an activity that causes fear or distress out of proportion to its importance (the importance being getting your baby from point A to point B)? Is your baby just an imaginary object of fear? I’d like to think not.

So, while the two words are similarly defined (and often appear as synonyms of each other), be careful to make sure you’re using the word with the right definition. Even Beyoncé can lead us astray sometimes.

7 Ghoulish Grammar Gaffes That Will Give You Chills

If you’re too old to be frightened by scary costumes, and you’ve watched so many horror movies that nothing can give you the chills anymore, you might think you’re preparing for a thrill-free Halloween. But we beg to differ. Creepier than the most realistic Halloween costumes, darker than the most terrifying horror movies, there are grammar mistakes—ghoulish and gnarly and gloomy and many other adjectives starting with the letter g. So be careful not to make one of these seven on All Hallows’ Eve. Who knows what might happen if you do?

1 The Ghastly Apostrophe This serious grammar gaffe lurks in Halloween’s other name—All Hallows’ Eve. It contains an apostrophe you shouldn’t dare to forget or misplace. Place it after the s in “hallows” because it’s a plural. You would write “hallow’s” if there were only one hallow to which the eve belongs.

2 The Serial Comma Nothing good can come out of anything serial on Halloween. The serial comma is optional in most cases, but leaving it out can sometimes change the meaning of your sentence. If you say you’re celebrating Halloween with two ghosts, grandma and grandpa, you’ll be saying that your grandparents came back to haunt you. By adding the serial comma and saying that you’re celebrating Halloween with two ghosts, grandma, and grandpa, you’ll be saying that you and your grandparents are having a Halloween party with a couple of ghosts. And that sounds like a much better situation, doesn’t it?

3 Creeped Out Yet? If something creeps you out, you can later say that it creeped you out. But if something creeps up on you on Halloween, can you say that it creeped up on you? You can’t, because the past participle of the verb creep is crept. The only time this irregular verb becomes regular is in the phrasal verb creep out.

4 Dismembered Sentences There’s an old rule that says every sentence has to have a subject and a verb. If you’ve got those two things, you can do whatever you want with the rest of the sentence. But if you dismember your sentence by chopping off a subordinate clause and turning it into a new sentence, you might be making a mistake. Not that it’s always bad to dismember a sentence and use some of its fragments. It’s not. It can be very effective, as long as you don’t overdo it.

5 The Vague Pronoun Reference Too many “thats” and “thoses” at the beginning of sentences can create a thick layer of fog over a text. If Halloween movies have taught us anything, it’s that bad things happen when it’s foggy. Writing becomes difficult to understand when readers have to backtrack and figure out what all those pronouns are referring to. Your text will be less clear, and clarity is the difference between walking toward the strange noise to see what’s making it and running for your life as soon as you hear it.

6 Comma Splices OK, using commas to splice sentences doesn’t make you a mad scientist who splices the DNA of a scorpion with the DNA of a hamster, but you are creating something that doesn’t look quite right. And unlike the mad scientist, you have plenty of other tools at your disposal to create something new that actually makes sense—from dashes to semicolons to conjunctions.

7 The Disappearing Comma You could have sworn you put commas around that non-restrictive element, but now they’re not there and your sentence sounds weird. Looks like you’ve been visited by the disappearing comma, a rare phenomenon that happens when we’re sure we use our commas properly but in reality we don’t. Commas should always follow an introductory element and should always set off a non-restrictive element. It’s also a good idea to throw a comma after the next-to-last item in a list (that’s the serial comma right there). As soon as you learn these rules, the disappearing comma will stop bothering you.

Improving Your Writing Will Improve Your Life

Everyone wants a little taste of the good life, but it’s often difficult to figure out just how to cook it up and savor it. After all, the recipe for success can be more complex than the method behind a Yotam Ottolenghi vegetable dish.

The first challenge, naturally, is identifying the right ingredients. And unless you think the key to a better existence merely opens the door to a Ferrari, you’re most likely part of the crowd that agrees that health, peace of mind, and happiness are critical components.

This trinity has long been at the heart of society’s idea of true richness, and while we can’t guarantee that improving your writing will put each element within easy reach, getting a better grip on grammar, expanding your vocabulary, and showing greater mastery of written communication will put you on the right track.

More specifically:

You’ll be more successful.

At everything, especially when it comes to your career.

According to a 2010 MetLife Survey, 97 percent of executives rate writing skills as absolutely essential or very important. Not to mention, a recent Forbes study found that one of the skills employers most want to see in 2015 graduates is the ability to create and edit written reports.

In a nutshell, writing is a critical part of business communication today, and those who do it well will, at the very least, be viewed as more capable, more valuable employees.

On a similar note, writing has been linked to strong critical thinking and analytical skills, two abilities that form the foundation of powerful decision-making, a trait that goes hand in hand with leadership. Read between the lines here, and you’ll see what we’re getting at: promotion, promotion, promotion!

Finally, even if you’re not part of a traditional business environment, writing well can help you deliver your message clearly and concisely, which will be essential to advancing your ideas, agendas, and proposals.

You’ll be more attractive.

Sure, you could adopt a Jack Kerouac or Donna Tartt look, but that’s not what we’re alluding to. Improving your writing will make you sexier regardless of your style or your practiced ennui.

That’s because it makes you happier and more confident, two qualities that bring in the dates like a dinner bell brings in the laborers at the end of a hard day of farm work.

Our reasoning?

Improving your ability to write expressively, which means jotting down traumatic, emotional, or stressful events, will help uplift your mind and body. At least that’s what social psychologist James Pennebaker found when he asked people to write in this way for three to five sessions of fifteen to twenty minutes over the course of several days.

Taking it one step further, the sense of ease you get from offloading complicated negative thoughts and feelings is an indicator of confidence, which even science has endorsed as one of the most attractive qualities in a person.

Just don’t get so good at expressive writing that your ego overinflates; there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance.

You’ll have stronger relationships with your family and friends.

Language scientists believe that writing transforms our complex cognitive processing abilities. Putting pen to paper allows us to more clearly think through ideas that were previously difficult or impossible to wrap our heads around.  By extension, it means we can better articulate our notions and feelings even when we’re communicating verbally.

When is this especially useful? When forming and maintaining important relationships, of course.

Interpersonal connections depend heavily on self-expression and our knack for understanding how our own opinions align with those of others. Once you can make sense of the mad jumble inside your own mind, you can engage in a meaningful way with friends and family.

Not to give you any ideas, but it also means your powers of persuasion will likely increase dramatically. What was it that you needed your loved ones to say yes to again?

You’ll have more time to do the things you love.

Improving your writing means you’ll spend less time editing, which means you’ll have more time to look at bugs, go base jumping, or read that classic that’s been gathering dust on your bookshelf for a small eternity.

If the kind of writing you’re doing doesn’t demand editing, that’s even better (then you’ll have loads of time). Jokes aside, writing can make you more productive and more focused. 

As mentioned, your thoughts will have a new clarity, and you won’t need to wade through a tangle of ideas stuffing up your brain.

If you happen to be writing about goals you want to achieve, improving your ability to pinpoint your objectives and your path to reaching them will make you more likely to get results. Clinical psychologist Gail Matthews effectively proved this by conducting a study at the Dominican University of California.

Then you can use your increased attractiveness and your newfound knack for making strong connections to become even more successful! Voilà!

Can you think of an example of when writing helped improve your life? We want to hear it. Tell us about it in the comment section below or via our Facebook or Twitter feeds.

---

Stephanie Katz is a San Francisco–based writer who, contrary to the way it may seem, won’t correct your grammar over beers, coffees, or any other normal life interaction. She tells stories about health, history, travel, and more and can be contacted via email at stekatz@gmail.com.

Suppose vs. Supposed—Is There a Difference?

Supposed to is part of a modal verb phrase meaning expected to or required to. Although suppose to crops up frequently in casual speech and writing, it should not be used in that sense. Suppose (without the d) should only be used as the present tense of the verb meaning to assume (something to be true).

When to Use Supposed To

To be supposed to is a common phrase that functions the same way a modal verb does. Modal verbs, also called auxiliary or helping verbs, add meaning to the main verb in a sentence by expressing possibility, ability, permission, or obligation. Supposed to, like have to, can fall into the “obligation” category.

I have to be home by midnight or my coach will turn into a pumpkin.

I am supposed to be home by midnight or my coach will turn into a pumpkin.

It can also be used to indicate what a person (or thing) is likely to do or is reputed to do.

It was supposed to rain today.

She is supposed to be the best poodle breeder in town.

Whenever it is used in either of these senses, supposed to will be preceded by a form of to be and followed by a verb.

He is supposed to turn in his homework on Friday mornings.

Were we supposed to be here so early?

The Verb To Suppose

On the other hand, the verb to suppose means to presume, in theory, that something is the case without certain evidence.

Max isn’t here yet, so I suppose his train was delayed.

The committee supposes that the decline in profits is due to a faulty product design.

As an imperative, it can mean the equivalent of what would happen if.

Suppose my coach really does turn into a pumpkin. What will I do then?

Supposed To, Have To, and Ought To

Some English language learners are easily confused by the modal verbs to be supposed to, have to, and ought to. While all three function similarly in a sentence, their meanings are subtly different.

To be supposed to do something implies that the subject is obligated and expected to do the main verb’s action, although there is a possibility it won’t happen.

The magician is supposed to pull a rabbit out of his hat.

Here, there is an expectation that the magician will be able to perform his trick correctly, but there is always a chance that he won’t succeed. The sentence conveys this expectation and the reader must now wait to see if that expectation will be fulfilled.

Has to means the same as must; it implies that the subject has no choice about performing the verb’s action.

The magician has to produce the rabbit to earn applause.

This sentence conveys that if the magician does not produce the rabbit, there will be no applause. He simply must do it to get the result he wants.

Ought to is more of a suggestion. It conveys what would be best for the subject to do, but the subject is not compelled to do it.

The magician ought to slip his rabbit a carrot before the show.

To ensure that he has a compliant, content rabbit in his hat, the magician should give his rabbit a carrot, although no one requires it of him. It would simply be a good idea.

If you only remember a single grammar factoid about suppose, let it be that you can confidently expunge “I am suppose to…” from your literary repertoire forever. That’s just how it is supposed to be.