How Many Words Do We Need?

Loved this post from John Forde’s Copywriter Roundtable newsletter (www.copywritersroundtable.com) about how many words we need to communicate.  Apparently there is a line of thought that says we only need 100 words in our language to communicate most of what we need to communicate.  And the BBC listed the most common 100 words ... and most are short words (no surprise).  A reminder to all of us as we communicate.  Here’s the article: ** The coach of England's football team is Italian.

And not fluent in the Queen's tongue. No bigga deala,

he says. He only needs about 100 words to communicate

what he wants to his players, he told the BBC.

But is he right? It's true you can do you can muster

a few basics on 100 words. But even basic language

learners tend to tuck away at least 2,000. And if

you're local, you'll have as many as 20,000 or more.

That said, the BBC listed the 100 most common words.

Not one in the top 10 has more than four letters.

Most have three or less. In fact, the first five-

letter common word is "would" at #37.

The only six-letter words is "people" at #61 and

"because" at #94 on the list. Just goes to show you,

even the well-versed go for the same kinds of short,

punchy words that work best in copy.