Tricky Edits Column for July 2026

Tricky Edits

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

When Words Disappear…

Forgotten Words Aren’t Only About Dementia Onset

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson,

author of the HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers

Including the soon to be released Word by Word: A Vocabulary for Success

Words disappear all the time. They disappear from dictionaries because the English language is full of words lexicographers have determined we don’t use any more—or don’t use enough to warrant a place in current dictionaries. Maybe it’s scarier for us writers as we search for reasons we seem to forget so many of them. Instead of freaking out we can blame a lot on the English language or the words themselves.  

But English-speakers love both our language and words do matter who they belong to so much we tend to borrow words and make up new ones at will. Our needs sometimes change and we discard them or we misuse them often enough we come to dislike the words themselves. We forget them when we’re young because our needs change and we forget them as we age. When they disappear—for whatever reason, we tend to miss them, so we replace them with something else. We have so many they’ve outgrown many libraries.  

We treasure the internet; it’s a good, but not perfect keeper of words for us. And when we need them, we can sometimes feel despair coming on. We might just give up. We need these words to put into the mouths of characters. Maybe characters who live in another English-speaking country or dialect-speaking region.

Maybe characters we were bring to life from another century, another era, another class. When we reach such an impasse, here are a few ways to conquer the problem. It’s time to get creative about our methods: 

~Ask your wife or even the person sitting next to you at Starbucks trying to get some writing done.

~Using keywords, look books published in past decades on Amazon’s New and used feature.

~I have a couple books of slang that I’ve stashed in my own real-life bookshelves.  Some are out of print, but I’m keeping them safe. 

~Ask people you know who are lots older—or younger—and see what they come up with.

~Make up a word of your own. A famous poem called Jabberwocky made such words perfectly legitimate.

~Visit charity shops and buy old paperbacks for a dime or a dollar by the tiny amount of time it takes for our newsletter editor, Dawn Colclasure, to publish this for you.  

~ Many of us start with Thesauri but anything including lists of words for specific purposes will do like one published only a few decades ago called The Describer’s Dictionary. 

~Put marginalia in all your book and don’t go giving them to charity or anyone else. 

~Build more bookshelves so you won’t feel obligated to clean house.

~And alphabetize your books in ways that will be meaningful to you decades from now.  

~Adopt librarians’ methods of categorizing your own collections of favorites, or super useful jargon used in your area of expertise—be it a profession or a hobby.  

~Watch for this column. I’m planning an article titled A Thesaurus Is No Longer the Forgetful Author’s Best Friend. It’s about some seldom-used trick you can apply to your desktop’s Microsoft dictionary feature. 

MORE ABOUT YOUR #SPARREW CONTRIBUTOR:                                         

The triptych that Amazon provides the authors of series published by their KDP unit. It feels like a bonus. 

Once a month Carolyn Howard-Johnson shares something writer-related she hopes might save some author from embarrassment (or make the task of writing more fun or creative.) The third edition of The Frugal Editor from Modern History Press includes contact list magic. It is the second multi award-winning book in her multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers. Find it on Amazon’s new buy-page for series where the e-book is offered with one click of online’s version of a set of books. (The availability—free—of that new page for authors with book series that appear on KDP’s pages is another of her #FrugalBookPromoterTips.) And her winningest book, The Frugal Editor, has been fully updated including a chapter on how backmatter can be extended to help readers and nudge book sales. And watch for her new book on—you guessed it—word lists!

This article is an excerpt from a new vocabulary book written especially for career-minded authors that WinningWriters.com will give to those who enter their 2024 #NorthStreetBookPrize. Carolyn has been a sponsor since that contest’s introduction. This book is among the several value-added benefits Winning Writers contestants and winners are offered at no extra charge. Carolyn’s book will be released in early 2026 by Modern History Press. Find the entire series on a special Series Page offered by Amazon.

Carolyn blogs sporadically on editing at The Frugal Editor and at her SharingwithWriters blog on other aspects of the publishing world and welcomes guest posts with ample author credit lines and links and welcomes guest posts complete with credit lines and ample links for her guests. She also tweets writers' resources and tips at her Twitter account using #FrugalBookPromoterTips hashtag.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson brings her experience as a publicist, journalist, marketer, and retailer to the advice she gives in her HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers and the many classes she taught for nearly a decade as instructor for UCLA Extension’s world-renown Writers’ Program where has found a little humor can decidedly make a lot of learning easier on one’s disposition. 

The books in her HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers have won multiple awards. That series includes both the third editions of The Frugal Book Promoter and my The Frugal Editor. Published by Modern History Press, they have won awards from USA Book News, Readers’ Views Literary Award, Dan Poynter’s Global Ebook Award, the marketing award from Next Generation Indie Books and others including the coveted Irwin award. How To Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically is still in its first (very frugal!) edition but please wait for the second edition from Modern History Press. 

Howard-Johnson is the recipient of the California Legislature’s Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award, and her community’s Character and Ethics award for her work promoting tolerance with her writing. She was also named to Pasadena Weekly’s list of “Fourteen San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen” and was given her community’s Diamond Award for Achievement in the Arts.