As a writer, an English student, a copy editor, and now an Editor-in-Chief, my goal in life has always been to figure out how to use words effectively. My ability to do this has improved and refined over time, and while my audience for Harry Potter fan fiction is just a tiny bit different from my audience for an essay on The Waste Land (the audience for a newspaper article on the merits of eating bugs is different still), I like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at presenting my words clearly and concisely.
However, another dimension of written communication—one that involves much more than just the literal meaning of the sentence or how nice it sounds when you read it out loud—has become more and more apparent to me as I’ve grown older, become more socially aware, and learned to understand and acknowledge my privileges. I’d often heard the term “the power of words” thrown around, but before I came to university and got involved with The Strand, I never thought much about what that could mean in practice. When you’re involved in a medium as public and widely read as a newspaper, though, the practical effects of words and their impact on others in everyday settings become more and more obvious. And not just in a journalistic setting—words can have an immense potential to hurt, heal, support, and disappoint in almost every context.
I feel this issue of The Strand embodies this idea nicely. Over these 16 pages, you’ll encounter several articles that touch on the power of words in a variety of contexts, from their impact on everyday activities to how they can shape more defining moments in our lives. On page 4 you’ll find an article exploring the merits of sensitivity in academia and how different approaches to words can both bestow and withhold agency. This issue’s featured article on page 8 discusses the pitfalls of using the inaccessibility of words as a marker of personal intelligence. As you can see on the opposite page, my co-Editor-in-Chief has already discussed the online threats made against feminist students and staff of the university earlier this month—an example, of course, of how easily words can inflict violence and instill fear and, conversely, inspire a positive response of strength and defiance.
As you quite possibly already know (or will hopefully at least come to learn through future experiences), “the power of words” isn’t solely the domain of people with large audiences, like authors or speechmakers. No matter the apparent reach (or lack thereof) your words might have, developing the ability to understand their impact is an essential skill for every conscientious human being, especially if you have a lot of social privilege, like I do. If I’ve learned anything about words over the course of my time using them, it’s that you can and should always strive to improve your understanding of how others interpret them, and that developing a healthy reverence for their power is very helpful in this regard. What seems harmless or funny to one person can, obviously, inspire hurt and anger in another; even the most carefully constructed sentence can leave out crucial viewpoints or experiences if not cultivated with an understanding of the sentence’s potential impact.
Ultimately, there will always be a gap between what you mean to say and what you actually end up saying, and understanding the potential your words have to affect people positively and negatively is crucial to bridging this gap.
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