Scott Bush

Lan­guage is a beau­ti­ful and var­ied con­cept, with room enough for all man­ner of style, voice, and of course, word choice. As one who often edits the writ­ing of oth­ers (or wishes he’d had the oppor­tu­nity to do so), I’ve encoun­tered some word choices that seem to per­sist despite sim­pler, more direct options. One of these is the word “uti­lize,” which in the vast major­ity of cases should have sim­ply been “use.”

What’s the big deal? There isn’t one, unless you also care about abom­i­na­tions like “drownd,” “irre­gard­less,” or “new and improved.” Oh, or if you’re look­ing to min­i­mize char­ac­ter counts in your tweets or texts: “use” rep­re­sents a 50% reduc­tion in let­ters! To be fair, though, peo­ple would prob­a­bly just write “UZ” instead.

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