Identity designates the attempt to differentiate and integrate a sense of self along different social and personal dimensions such as gender, age, race, occupation, gangs, socio-economic status, ethnicity, class, nation states, or regional territory.
Any claim of identity faces three dilemmas: (a) sameness of a sense of self over time in the face of constant change; (b) uniqueness of the individual vis-à-vis others faced with being the same as everyone else; and (c) the construction of agency as constituted by self (with a self-to-world direction of fit) and world (with a world-to-self direction of fit). Claims to identity begin with the continuity/change dilemma and from there venture into issues of uniqueness and agency; self and sense of self begin by constructing agency and differentiating self from others and then go on to navigate the waters of continuity and change.
Engaging in any activity requires acts of self-identification by relying on repertoires that identify and contextualize speakers/writers along varying socio-cultural categories, often compared to mental or linguistic representations (Emmott & Alexander → Schemata) that are less fixed depending on context and function. Narrating, a speech activity that involves ordering characters in space and time, is a privileged genre for identity construction because it requires situating characters in time and space through gesture, posture, facial cues, and gaze in coordination with speech. In addition, narrating, whether in the form of fictional or factual narration (Schaeffer → Fictional vs. Factual Narration), tends toward “human life”—something more than what is reportable or tellable (Baroni → Tellability), something that is life- and live-worthy (Taylor 1989). Thus, narrating enables speakers/writers to disassociate the speaking/writing self from the act of speaking, to take a reflective position vis-à-vis self as character (Jannidis → Character).
Taking a reflective position on self as character has been elaborated in the narratological differentiation between author (Schönert → Author), narrator (Margolin → Narrator), and character. The reflective process takes place in the present but refers to past or fictitious time-space, making past (or imagined) events relevant for the act of telling, pointing toward the meaningfulness of relationships and worthwhile lives, and exemplifying “the human good” (Aristotle 1996: 1461a). It is against this backdrop that narrating in recent decades has established itself as a privileged site for identity analysis—a new territory for inquiry (cf. Ricœur  1992; Strawson 2004).
Designing characters in fictitious timespace has the potential of opening up territory for exploring identity, reaching beyond traditional boundaries, and testing out novel identities. Narratives rooted in factual past-time events, by contrast, are dominated by an opposite orientation. The delineation of what happened, whose agency was involved, and the potential transformation of characters from one state to another serve to demarcate the identity of the reflective self under investigation. If past-time narration is triggered by the question “Who am I?,” having the narrator’s quest for identity or sense of self as its goal, the leeway for ambiguity, transgression of boundaries, or exploration of novel identities is more restricted: the goal is rather to condense and unite, to resolve ambiguity, and to deliver answers that lay further inquiry into past and identity to rest.
However, the reduction of identity to the depiction of characters and their development in a story leaves out the communicative space within which identities are negotiated in interaction with others. Limiting narratives to what they are about restricts identity to the referential or cognitive level of speech activities and disregards real life, where identities are under construction, formed, performed, and change over time. It is within the space of everyday talk in interaction with others that narration plays its constitutive role in the formation and navigation of identities as part of everyday practices and that the potential for orientation toward human values takes form. When considering the emergence of identity, the narrating subject must be regarded: (a) as neither locked into stability nor drifting through constant change, but rather as something that is multiple, contradictory, and distributed over time and place, held together contextually and locally; (b) in terms of membership positions vis-à-vis others that help to trace the narrator’s identity within the context of social relationships, groups, and institutions; and (c) as the active and agentive locus of control, though simultaneously attributing agency to outside forces that are situated in a broader socio-historical context. Along these lines, identity is not confined by just one societal discourse but open to change. Identity is able to transform itself and adapt to the challenges of growing cultural multiplicities in increasingly globalizing environments.
Based on the assumption that narration at its origin was a verbal act performed locally in interactional contexts and from there evolved toward other, differently constituted and contextualized media (writing, electronic, and digital media, etc.; cf. Ryan 2006), the function of narration in identity formation processes cannot be reduced to the verbal means used or to the messages conveyed. Rather, the local interactional environments in which narrative units emerge form the foundation for inquiry into identity formation and the sense of self. While transformations from oral to written forms of expression have been studied (e.g. Ong 1982) and text-critical analysis has been undertaken from the perspective of the hermeneutic circle, work with transcripts from audio recordings is relatively new. More recent are concerted efforts to record narratives audio-visually and to analyze the way they emerge in interaction, including the sophisticated ways in which they are performed. Audio-visual material, of course, can be more fully (micro-analytically) scrutinized in terms of the contextualized coordination of narrative form, content, and performance features (Berns → Performativity) in the service of identity formation processes.
Recently, this type of micro-analytic analysis has been applied to identity as achieved in narration under the heading of “positioning analysis” (Bamberg 1997, 2003; Bamberg & Georgakopoulou 2008) in order to focus more effectively on the situated nature of identification processes that emerge from the three identity dilemmas mentioned above. Navigating and connecting temporal continuity and discontinuity, self and other differentiation, and the direction of fit between person and world, take place in the small stories told on everyday occasions in which tellers affirm a sense of who they are. It is precisely this sense of self and identity grounded in sequential, moment-by-moment interactive engagements, largely undertheorized and often dismissed in traditional identity inquiry, that operates on verbal texts or cognitive representations (Herman → Cognitive Narratology).
Self and identity are traditionally bound up with what is taken to be the essence of the individual person which continues over time and space in phylo- as well as in socio- and onto-genetic terms. However, this overlooks how conceptions of self and identity have evolved historically and culturally and also how each individual’s personal ontogenesis undergoes continuous change. In addition, essentialist views of self and identity camouflage the links between these concepts and their counterparts in narration and narrative practices. Section 3.1 will further explore the connection between self and identity dilemmas (b) and (c), while section 3.2 will be devoted to identity and dilemma (a).
Although self, like “I” and “me,” are highly specific morphological items of the English lexicon, they are commonly assumed to refer universally to corresponding concepts in other languages—an assumption that has been contested, however. A closer look reveals that these concepts most often have a history of their own that varies in illuminating ways (cf. Heelas & Lock eds. 1981; Triandis 1989). Modern notions of self and individuality (cf. Elias  1991; Gergen 1991) are taken to be closely intertwined with the emergence of local communities, nation states, new forms of knowledge and reflection (“rationalization”), feeling, and perception—all in conjunction with increasing interiorization and psychologization.
In this process of becoming individualized, self-narration (autobiography, life-writing, autofiction) springs to the fore as the basic practice-ground for marking the self off from “I” as speaker/agent and “me” as character/actor (cf. the narratological distinctions between “narrating self” and “narrated self” and between narrator and protagonist). Acts of thematizing and displacing the self as character in past time and space become the basis for other self-related actions such as self-disclosure, self-reflection and self-criticism, potentially leading to self-control, self-constraint, and self-discipline. What further comes to light in this process is an increasing differentiation between (and integration of) “I” and “me” (James  1989), and simultaneously between “I-we-us” and “them-other” (Elias  1991). Thus, self, apparently, is the product of an “I” that manages three processes of differentiation and integration: (a) it can posit a “me” (as distinct from “I”); (b) it can posit and balance this “I-me” distinction with “we”; and (c) it can differentiate this “we” as “us” from “them” as “other.” This process of differentiation must be taken into account when talking about “self” as different from “other” and viewing self “in relation to self” (as in self-reflection and self-control). Self, as differentiated from other by developing the ability to account for itself (as agent or as undergoer), to self-reflect, and to self-augment, can now begin to look for something like temporal continuity, unity, and coherence, i.e. identity across a life (cf. Ricœur  1992).
The ability to conceive of life as an integrated narrative forms the cornerstone for what Erikson ( 1963) called “ego identity.” The underlying assumption here is that life begins to co-jell into building blocks that, when placed in the right order, cohere: important moments tie into important events, events into episodes, and episodes into a life story.
It is this analogy between life and story—or better: the metaphoric process of seeing life as storied (in narratological terms: story and discourse) that has given substantive fuel to the narrative turn. The strength of how scholars (and laypeople) in the past have made use of this connection, though, varies: on the one hand, there is a relatively loose connection according to which we tell stories of lives by using particular narrative formats. Lives can be told as following an epic script or as if consisting of unconnected patches. Most often, though, lives are told by depicting characters and how they develop. Character, particularly in modern times, rests on an internal and an external form of organization. The former is typically a complex interiority, a set of traits organizing underlying actions and the course of events as outcomes of motives that spring from this interiority. The latter, an external condition of character development, takes plot as the overarching principle that lends order to human action in response to the threat of a discontinuous and seemingly meaningless life by a set of possible continuities (often referred to by cognitive narratologists as “schemata” or “scripts”; cf. Herman 2002: chap. 3). This interplay of human (and humane) interiority and culturally available models of continuity (plots) gives narrative a powerful role in the process of seeing life as narrative. It also should be noted that the arrangement of interiority as governed by the availability of plots gives answers—at least to a degree—to the “direction-of-fit” or “agency” identity dilemma. With narration thus defined, life transcends the animalistic and unruly body so that narration gains the power to organize “human temporality” (Punday 2003; see also Ricœur  1990): the answer to non-human, a-temporal, and discontinuous chaos.
Another, and probably stronger reason for employing the narrative metaphor for life starts with the assumption of a “narrative mode of thinking.” Bruner (1986) and Polkinghorne (1988) similarly vie for the argument that there is a particular cognitive mode of making sense of the (social) world which is organized “narratively” (an important theme in cognitive psychology; cf. Herman 2002, 2009). Freeman’s (1993) and Mishler’s (1986) work with autobiographical memories focuses particularly on the interrelationship between memory, autobiographical memory, and narrative. Mishler early on propagated the use of autobiographic narrative interview data in the form of a “contextual approach” which is not limited to recording data about human experience or to looking “behind” the author, but that focuses on interaction and relationships.
McAdams (1985), building on narrative theorists such as Bruner, Polkinghorne, and Sarbin, has turned the assumption of selves plotting themselves in and across time into a life-story model of identity. His model clearly states that life stories are more than recapitulations of past events and episodes, that they have a defining character: “our narrative identities are the stories we live by” (McAdams et al. 2006: 4). McAdams’ efforts to connect the study of lives to life stories is paralleled in a wider turn to biographic methods in the social sciences, leading to Lieblich & Josselson’s eleven-volume series titled The Narrative Study of Lives.
The origins of these efforts stretch across a wide range of disciplines including psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Goodson & Sikes (2001: 129) date the origins of life history methods in the form of autobiographies back to the beginning of the 20th century. Since then, life history methods have spread from the study of attitudes in social psychology to community studies in sociology, particularly within the Chicago School, and forty years later back into psychology. Retrospectively, it can be argued that the early studies by the members of the Chicago School, and in particular “oral history” popularized by the works of Studs Terkel, lacked the analytic component of modern day narrative inquiry. However, without these origins and the works of Bertaux (1981) and Plummer (1983), the foundation of the Research Committee on Biography and Society (within the International Sociological Association) would have been unthinkable. The methodological principles were laid out in the early work by Schütze (1977) and later picked up and refined in current narrative interview approaches by Fischer-Rosenthal & Rosenthal (1997).
Thanks to these developments, it is clearer how the relatively massive turn in the social sciences toward biography and life writing was able to gain ground as a new approach to identity research. It emerged as a concerted attempt to wed self-differentiation (self that can reflect upon itself) and narration (plotting a sense of characterhood across time)—in narratological terms: “narrating self” and “narrated self”—into an answer that addresses the three dilemmas of identity laid out earlier. A teller accounts for how s/he (a) has emerged (as character) over time, (b) as different from others (but same), and simultaneously (c) how s/he views her-/himself as a (responsible) agent. Managing these three dilemmas in concert is taken to establish what is essential to identity. Consequently, life-writing and biography, preferably as autobiography or life story, become privileged arenas for identity research.
The link between life and narration and the exploration of lives (including selves and identity) through the exploration of narratives have traditions going back to Freud ( 1913), Allport (1937), and Murray (1938). However, this close connection between life and narrative is said to require a particular retrospectiveness that values “life as reflected” and discredits “life as lived.” Sartwell (2000) has questioned (a) whether life really has the purpose and meaningfulness that narrative theorists metaphorically attempt to attribute to it and (b) whether narratives themselves have the kind of coherence (Toolan → Coherence) and telic quality that narrative theorists often assume. The problem Sartwell sees in this kind of approach is that the lived moment, the way it is “sensed” and experienced, is said to gain its life-worthy quality only in light of its surrounding moments. Rather than empowering the subject with meaning in life, Sartwell argues, narrative, conceived this way, drains and blocks him or her from finding pleasure and joy in the here-and-now. The subject is overpowered by narrative as a normalizing machine.
Another difficulty resulting from the close linkage between life, narration, and identity consists in what Lejeune ( 1989) termed “the autobiographical pact.” According to Lejeune, what counts as autobiography is somewhat blurry, since it is based on a “pact” between author and reader that is not directly traceable down into the textual qualities. Thus, while a life story can employ the first-person pronoun to feign the identity of author, narrator, and character, use of the third-person pronoun may serve to camouflage this identity (cf. narrative unreliability; Shen → Unreliability). Autobiographical fiction thrives on the blurring of these boundaries. Of interest here are “the perennial theoretical questions of authenticity and reference” (Porter 2008: 25) leading up to the larger issue of the connection between referentiality and narration (cf. Genette’s 1990 distinction between fictional narrative and factual narrative).
While most research on biography has been quite aware of the situated and locally occasioned nature of people’s accounts (often in institutional settings) and the problems this poses for claims with regard to the speaker/narrator’s sense of self or identity, a number of researchers have launched a large-scale critique of the biographic turn as reducing language to its referential and ideational functions and thereby overextending (and simplifying) narration as the root metaphor for the person, (sense of) self, and identity. At the core of these voices is the call for a much “needed antidote to the longstanding tradition of ‘big stories’ which, be they in the form of life stories or of stories of landmark events, have monopolized the inquiry into tellers’ representations of past events and themselves in light of these events” (Georgakopoulou 2007: 147; cf. Strawson 2004).
Attempts to transport interactional context and performance-oriented aspects of narration into the analysis of identities reach back to Burke (1945) and Goffman (1959) and have been reiterated repeatedly by others in the field of biography research (e.g. Mishler 1986; Riessman 2008). More recent attempts to integrate this acknowledgment into empirical analysis center around a number of key positions. First is the proposal to resituate narration as performative moves (cf. Langellier & Peterson 2004), calling for the analysis of embodied practices and material conditions of narrative productions. Similarly, Gubrium & Holstein (2008) argue for a narrative ethnography—one that is able to analyze the complex interplay between “experience, storying practices, descriptive resources, purposes at hand, audiences, and the environments that condition storytelling” (250).
Georgakopoulou (2006, 2007) and Bamberg (1997, 2003; Bamberg & Georgakopoulou 2008) have tried to develop an alternative approach to big story narrative research that takes “narratives-in-interaction,” i.e. the way stories surface in everyday conversation (small stories), as the locus where identities are continuously practiced and tested out. This approach allows for exploring self at the level of the talked-about and at the level of tellership in the here-and-now of a storytelling situation. Both of these levels feed into the larger project at work in the global situatedness within which selves are already positioned, i.e. with more or less implicit and indirect referencing and orientation to social positions and discourses above and beyond the here-and-now.
Placing emphasis on small stories allows for the study of how people as agentive actors position themselves—and in doing so become positioned. This model of positioning affords the possibility of viewing identity constructions as two-fold: analyzing the way the referential world is constructed, with characters (self and others) emerging in time and space as protagonists and antagonists. Simultaneously, it is possible to show how the referential world (what the story is about) is constructed as a function of interactive engagement, i.e. the way the referential world is put together points to how tellers “want to be understood,” how they index their sense of self. Consequently, it is the action orientation of the participants in small story events that forms the basic point of departure for this functionalist-informed approach to narration and, to a lesser degree, what is represented or reflected upon in the stories told. This seems to be what makes this type of work with small stories crucially different from work with big stories: the aim is to analyze how people use small stories in their interactive engagements to construct a sense of who they are, while big story research analyzes the stories as representations of world and identities within them.
Behind this way of approaching and working with stories is an action orientation that urges the analyst to look at constructions of self and identity as necessarily dialogical and relational, fashioned and refashioned in local interactive practices (cf. Antaki & Widdicombe eds. 1998; Shepherd → Dialogism). At the same time, it recognizes that small story participants generally attune their stories to various local, interpersonal purposes, sequentially gauging themselves to prior and upcoming talk, continuously challenging and confirming each others’ positions. It is in and through this type of relational activity that representations in the form of content, i.e. what the talk is intended to be about, are brought off and come into existence. By contrast, story analyses that remain fixated on the represented contents of the story in order to conclude from there how the teller reflects on him-/herself miss out on the very interactive and relational constructedness of content and reflection. Furthermore, this kind of analysis aims at scrutinizing the inconsistencies, ambiguities, contradictions, moments of trouble and tension, and the tellers’ constant navigation and finessing between different versions of selfhood and identity in local interactional contexts. However well-established the line of identities-in-interaction may be in the context of the analysis of conversational data, this emphasis still contrasts with the longstanding privileging of coherence by traditional approaches to narrative theory. Through the scrutiny of small stories in a variety of sites and contexts, the aim becomes to legitimize the management of different and often competing and contradictory positions as the mainstay of identity through narrative. A final aim is to advance a project of documenting identity as a process of constant change that, when practiced over and over again, has the potential to result in a sense of constancy and sameness, i.e. big stories that can be elicited under certain conditions.
(a) Whether narratives actually constitute a privileged territory for inquiry into life and identity requires further theoretical and empirical inquiry. Usually, this question is decided on the basis of a pre-theoretical, epistemological (if not ontological) stance. But the question itself may be open to different interpretations. (b) The use of narrative methods in the exploration of hybrid or hyphenated identities constitutes an interesting new development in recent trends of social science research in a turn to questions of citizenship, cultural exclusion, imagined communities, symbolic representations of belonging, and even general processes of globalization. (c) Illness and traumatic experiences are typically viewed as disruptions of continuity and coherence, posing challenges to the formation of a sense of self and (biographic) identity as well as to our sense of agency. Recent discussions about the plot-types employed in illness narratives and how patients’ narrative accounts can be made use of more productively in narrative medicine bring up interesting questions with regard to the construction of paths and trajectories of experiences, their inherent action potential, and the relationship to mapping out possible reconstructions from being re-active to becoming pro-active in the construction of patients’ “healing dramas.” (d) The increasing diversification into different narrative methods and approaches (content/thematic vs. structural/formal methods, now joined by discursive/performative approaches) has led to the question whether there is still a common core to the original “narrative approach” as an alternative to the study of subjectivity, self, and identity—the way, in retrospect, it seemed to have begun about thirty-five years ago.


All strong writers have something in common: they understand the value of word choice in writing. Strong word choice uses vocabulary and language to maximum effect, creating clear moods and images and making your stories and poems more powerful and vivid.
The meaning of “word choice” may seem self-explanatory, but to truly transform your style and writing, we need to dissect the elements of choosing the right word. This article will explore what word choice is, and offer some examples of effective word choice, before giving you 5 word choice exercises to try for yourself.
Word Choice Definition: The Four Elements of Word Choice
The definition of word choice extends far beyond the simplicity of “choosing the right words.” Choosing the right word takes into consideration many different factors, and finding the word that packs the most punch requires both a great vocabulary and a great understanding of the nuances in English.
Choosing the right word involves the following four considerations, with word choice examples.
Words can be chosen for one of two meanings: the denotative meaning or the connotative meaning. Denotation refers to the word’s basic, literal dictionary definition and usage. By contrast, connotation refers to how the word is being used in its given context: which of that word’s many uses, associations, and connections are being employed.
A word’s denotative meaning is its literal dictionary definition, while its connotative meaning is the web of uses and associations it carries in context.
We play with denotations and connotations all the time in colloquial English. As a simple example, when someone says “greaaaaaat” sarcastically, we know that what they’re referring to isn’t “great” at all. In context, the word “great” connotes its opposite: something so bad that calling it “great” is intentionally ridiculous. When we use words connotatively, we’re letting context drive the meaning of the sentence.
The rich web of connotations in language are crucial to all writing, and perhaps especially so to poetry, as in the following lines from Derek Walcott’s Nobel-prize-winning epic poem Omeros:
In hill-towns, from San Fernando to Mayagüez,
the same sunrise stirred the feathered lances of cane
down the archipelago’s highways. The first breeze
rattled the spears and their noise was like distant rain
marching down from the hills, like a shell at your ears.
Sugar cane isn’t, literally, made of “feathered lances,” which would literally denote “long metal spears adorned with bird feathers”; but feathered connotes “branching out,” the way sugar cane does, and lances connotes something tall, straight, and pointy, as sugar cane is. Together, those two words create a powerfully true visual image of sugar cane—in addition to establishing the martial language (“spears,” “marching”) used elsewhere in the passage.
Whether in poetry or prose, strong word choice can unlock images, emotions, and more in the reader, and the associations and connotations that words bring with them play a crucial role in this.
Use words that are both correct in meaning and specific in description.
In the sprawling English language, one word can have dozens of synonyms. That’s why it’s important to use words that are both correct in meaning and specific in description. Words like “good,” “average,” and “awful” are far less descriptive and specific than words like “liberating” (not just good but good and freeing), “C student” (not just average but academically average), and “despicable” (not just awful but morally awful). These latter words pack more meaning than their blander counterparts.
Since more precise words give the reader added context, specificity also opens the door for more poetic opportunities. Take the short poem “[You Fit Into Me]” by Margaret Atwood.
You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
A fish hook
An open eye
The first stanza feels almost romantic until we read the second stanza. By clarifying her language, Atwood creates a simple yet highly emotive duality.
This is also why writers like Stephen King advocate against the use of adverbs (adjectives that modify verbs or other adjectives, like “very”). If your language is precise, you don’t need adverbs to modify the verbs or adjectives, as those words are already doing enough work. Consider the following comparison:
Weak description with adverbs: He cooks quite badly; the food is almost always extremely overdone.
Strong description, no adverbs: He incinerates food.
Of course, non-specific words are sometimes the best word, too! These words are often colloquially used, so they’re great for writing description, writing through a first-person narrative, or for transitional passages of prose.
Good word choice takes the reader into consideration. You probably wouldn’t use words like “lugubrious” or “luculent” in a young adult novel, nor would you use words like “silly” or “wonky” in a legal document.
This is another way of saying that word choice conveys not only direct meaning, but also a web of associations and feelings that contribute to building the reader’s world. What world does the word “wonky” help build for your reader, and what world does the word “seditious” help build? Depending on the overall environment you’re working to create for the reader, either word could be perfect—or way out of place.
Consider your word choice to be the fingerprint of your writing.
Consider your word choice to be the fingerprint of your writing. Every writer uses words differently, and as those words come to form poems, stories, and books, your unique grasp on the English language will be recognizable by all your readers.
Style isn’t something you can point to, but rather a way of describing how a writer writes. Ernest Hemingway, for example, is known for his terse, no-nonsense, to-the-point styles of description. Virginia Woolf, by contrast, is known for writing that’s poetic, intense, and melodramatic, and James Joyce for his lofty, superfluous writing style.
Here’s a paragraph from Joyce:
Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam’s hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been knifed to death. They are not to be thought away. Time has branded them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they have ousted.
And here’s one from Hemingway:
Bill had gone into the bar. He was standing talking with Brett, who was sitting on a high stool, her legs crossed. She had no stockings on.
Style is best observed and developed through a portfolio of writing. As you write more and form an identity as a writer, the bits of style in your writing will form constellations.
Word Choice in Writing: The Importance of Verbs
Before we offer some word choice exercises to expand your writing horizons, we first want to mention the importance of verbs. Verbs, as you may recall, are the “action” of the sentence—they describe what the subject of the sentence actually does. Unless you are intentionally breaking grammar rules, all sentences must have a verb, otherwise they don’t communicate much to the reader.
Because verbs are the most important part of the sentence, they are something you must focus on when expanding the reaches of your word choice. Verbs are the most widely variegated units of language; the more “things” you can do in the world, the more verbs there are to describe them, making them great vehicles for both figurative language and vivid description.
Consider the following three sentences:
- The road runs through the hills.
- The road curves through the hills.
- The road meanders through the hills.
Which sentence is the most descriptive? Though each of them has the same subject, object, and number of words, the third sentence creates the clearest image. The reader can visualize a road curving left and right through a hilly terrain, whereas the first two sentences require more thought to see clearly.
Finally, this resource on verb usage does a great job at highlighting how to invent and expand your verb choice.
Word Choice in Writing: Economy and Concision
Strong word choice means that every word you write packs a punch. As we’ve seen with adverbs above, you may find that your writing becomes more concise and economical—delivering more impact per word. Above all, you may find that you omit needless words.
Omit needless words is, in fact, a general order issued by Strunk and White in their classic Elements of Style. As they explain it:
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
It’s worth repeating that this doesn’t mean your writing becomes clipped or terse, but simply that “every word tell.” As our word choice improves—as we omit needless words and express ourselves more precisely—our writing becomes richer, whether we write in long or short sentences.
As an example, here’s the opening sentence of a random personal essay from a high school test preparation handbook:
The world is filled with a numerous amount of student athletes that could somewhere down the road have a bright future.
Most words in this sentence are needless. It could be edited down to:
Many student athletes could have a bright future.
Now let’s take some famous lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Can you remove a single word without sacrificing an enormous richness of meaning?
Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
In strong writing, every single word is chosen for maximum impact. This is the true meaning of concise or economical writing.
5 Word Choice Exercises to Sharpen Your Writing
With our word choice definition in mind, as well as our discussions of verb use and concision, let’s explore the following exercises to put theory into practice. As you play around with words in the following word choice exercises, be sure to consider meaning, specificity, style, and (if applicable) audience.
1. Build Moods With Word Choice
Writers fine-tune their words because the right vocabulary will build lush, emotive worlds. As you expand your word choice and consider the weight of each word, focus on targeting precise emotions in your descriptions and figurative language.
This kind of point is best illustrated through word choice examples. An example of magnificent language is the poem “In Defense of Small Towns” by Oliver de la Paz. The poem’s ambivalent feelings toward small hometowns presents itself through the mood of the writing.
The poem is filled with tense descriptions, like “animal deaths and toughened hay” and “breeches speared with oil and diesel,” which present the small town as stoic and masculine. This, reinforced by the terse stanzas and the rare “chances for forgiveness,” offers us a bleak view of the town; yet it’s still a town where everything is important, from “the outline of every leaf” to the weightless flight of cattail seeds.
The writing’s terse, heavy mood exists because of the poem’s juxtaposition of masculine and feminine words. The challenge of building a mood produces this poem’s gravity and sincerity.
Try to write a poem, or even a sentence, that evokes a particular mood through words that bring that word to mind. Here’s an example:
- What mood do you want to evoke? flighty
- What words feel like they evoke that mood? not sure, whatever, maybe, perhaps, tomorrow, sometimes, sigh
- Try it in a sentence: “Maybe tomorrow we could see about looking at the lab results.” She sighed. “Perhaps.”
2. Invent New Words and Terms
A common question writers ask is, What is one way to revise for word choice? One trick to try is to make up new language in your revisions.
If you create language at a crucial moment, you might be able to highlight something that our current language can’t.
In the same way that unusual verbs highlight the action and style of your story, inventing words that don’t exist can also create powerful diction. Of course, your writing shouldn’t overflow with made-up words and pretentious portmanteaus, but if you create language at a crucial moment, you might be able to highlight something that our current language can’t.
A great example of an invented word is the phrase “wine-dark sea.” Understanding this invention requires a bit of history; in short, Homer describes the sea as “οἶνοψ πόντος”, or “wine-faced.” “Wine-dark,” then, is a poetic translation, a kind of kenning for the sea’s mystery.
Why “wine-dark” specifically? Perhaps because, like the sea, wine changes us; maybe the eyes of the sea are dark, as eyes often darken with wine; perhaps the sea is like a face, an inversion, a reflection of the self. In its endlessness, we see what we normally cannot.
Thus, “wine-dark” is a poetic combination of words that leads to intensive literary analysis. For a less historical example, I’m currently working on my poetry thesis, with pop culture monsters being the central theme of the poems. In one poem, I describe love as being “frankensteined.” By using this monstrous made-up verb in place of “stitched,” the poem’s attitude toward love is much clearer.
Try inventing a word or phrase whose meaning will be as clear to the reader as “wine-dark sea.” Here’s an example:
- What do you want to describe? feeling sorry for yourself because you’ve been stressed out for a long time
- What are some words that this feeling brings up? self-pity, sympathy, sadness, stress, compassion, busyness, love, anxiety, pity party, feeling sorry for yourself
- What are some fun ways to combine these words? sadxiety, stresslove
- Try it in a sentence: As all-nighter wore on, my anxiety softened into sadxiety: still edgy, but soft in the middle.
3. Only Use Words of Certain Etymologies
One of the reasons that the English language is so large and inconsistent is that it borrows words from every language. When you dig back into the history of loanwords, the English language is incredibly interesting!
(For example, many of our legal terms, such as judge, jury, and plaintiff, come from French. When the Normans [old French-speakers from Northern France] conquered England, their language became the language of power and nobility, so we retained many of our legal terms from when the French ruled the British Isles.)
Nerdy linguistics aside, etymologies also make for a fun word choice exercise. Try forcing yourself to write a poem or a story only using words of certain etymologies and avoiding others. For example, if you’re only allowed to use nouns and verbs that we borrowed from the French, then you can’t use Anglo-Saxon nouns like “cow,” “swine,” or “chicken,” but you can use French loanwords like “beef,” “pork,” and “poultry.”
Experiment with word etymologies and see how they affect the mood of your writing. You might find this to be an impactful facet of your word choice. You can Google “__ etymology” for any word to see its origin, and “__ synonym” to see synonyms.
Try writing a sentence only with roots from a single origin. (You can ignore common words like “the,” “a,” “of,” and so on.)
- What do you want to write? The apple rolled off the table.
- Try a first etymology: German: The apple wobbled off the bench.
- Try a second: Latin: The russet fruit rolled off the table.
4. Write in E-Prime
E-Prime Writing describes a writing style where you only write using the active voice. By eschewing all forms of the verb “to be”—using words such as “is,” “am,” “are,” “was,” and other “being” verbs—your writing should feel more clear, active, and precise!
E-Prime not only removes the passive voice (“The bottle was picked up by James”), but it gets at the reality that many sentences using to be are weakly constructed, even if they’re technically in the active voice.
Of course, E-Prime writing isn’t the best type of writing for every project. The above paragraph is written in E-Prime, but stretching it out across this entire article would be tricky. The intent of E-Prime writing is to make all of your subjects active and to make your verbs more impactful. While this is a fun word choice exercise and a great way to create memorable language, it probably isn’t sustainable for a long writing project.
Try writing a paragraph in E-Prime:
- What do you want to write? Of course, E-Prime writing isn’t the best type of writing for every project. The above paragraph is written in E-Prime, but stretching it out across this entire article would be tricky. The intent of E-Prime writing is to make all of your subjects active and to make your verbs more impactful. While this is a fun word choice exercise and a great way to create memorable language, it probably isn’t sustainable for a long writing project.
- Converted to E-Prime: Of course, E-Prime writing won’t best suit every project. The above paragraph uses E-Prime, but stretching it out across this entire article would carry challenges. E-Prime writing endeavors to make all of your subjects active, and your verbs more impactful. While this word choice exercise can bring enjoyment and create memorable language, you probably can’t sustain it over a long writing project.
5. Write Blackout Poetry
Blackout poetry, also known as Found Poetry, is a visual creative writing project. You take a page from a published source and create a poem by blacking out other words until your circled words create a new poem. The challenge is that you’re limited to the words on a page, so you need a charged use of both space and language to make a compelling blackout poem.
Blackout poetry bottoms out our list of great word choice exercises because it forces you to consider the elements of word choice. With blackout poems, certain words might be read connotatively rather than denotatively, or you might change the meaning and specificity of a word by using other words nearby. Language is at its most fluid and interpretive in blackout poems!
For a great word choice example using blackout poetry, read “The Author Writes the First Draft of His Wedding Vows” by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib. Here it is visually:
Pick a favorite poem of your own and make something completely new out of it using blackout poetry.
How to Expand Your Vocabulary
Vocabulary is a last topic in word choice. The more words in your arsenal, the better. Great word choice doesn’t rely on a large vocabulary, but knowing more words will always help! So, how do you expand your vocabulary?
The simplest way to expand your vocabulary is by reading.
The simplest answer, and the one you’ll hear the most often, is by reading. The more literature you consume, the more examples you’ll see of great words using the four elements of word choice.
Of course, there are also some great programs for expanding your vocabulary as well. If you’re looking to use words like “lachrymose” in a sentence, take a look at the following vocab builders:
Improve Your Word Choice With Writers.com’s Online Writing Courses
Looking for more writing exercises? Need more help choosing the right words? The instructors at Writers.com are masters of the craft. Take a look at our upcoming course offerings and join our community!
Take your next online writing course with our award-winning instructors!
Browse our upcoming courses by category:
- Online Fiction Writing Courses
- Online Creative Nonfiction Writing Courses
- Online Poetry Writing Courses
- Online Lifestyle and Wellness Writing Courses


Butch is an LGBTQ+ masculine gender expression or gender identity. While many people who identify as butch use the term in reference to their gender expression, others claim it as a nonbinary identity in itself, notably Leslie Feinberg, who defined butch as a gender neither male nor female. Butch is an identity that emerged in lesbian and bisexual culture in the 1940s, before there was a stark distinction in the community between types of women who were attracted to other women. Many lesbians have complicated relationships with gender, and may identify as simply butch. Butch is an identity that can be held by people of various queer sexual orientations and can belong to both cisgender and trans individuals.
Traditionally, the identity and term butch has been used by individuals who are attracted to femmes. For some butches, this attraction to femmes represents a strong part of their own identity. Because of this, you will often see the dyadic term "butch/femme," or referrals to a butch/femme dynamic. However, some butches are attracted to other butches (this was already a topic in Leslie Feinberg's seminal novel Stone Butch Blues). The phenomenon of butches attracted to other butches is commonly called "masc-for-masc".
Depending on the community in question, butch people may call themselves by different terms. In LGBT communities of people of color, there may be a preference for the words aggressive (ag for short) or stud, with much the same meaning as butch. White people should use "butch" rather than "stud".
The origin of the word "butch" is uncertain. The word butch, meaning "masculine", may have been coined by abbreviating the word butcher, as first noted in George Cassidy's nickname, Butch Cassidy.
"Butch" can be used as an adjective or a noun to describe an individual's gender or gender performance. A masculine person of any gender can be described as butch, even though it is more common to use the term towards females with more masculine traits. The term butch tends to denote a degree of masculinity displayed by a female individual beyond what would be considered typical of a tomboy. It is not uncommon for women with a butch appearance to face harassment or violence. A 1990s survey of butches showed that 50% were primarily attracted to femmes, while 25% reported being usually attracted to other butches.
There is debate about to whom the terms butch and femme can apply, and particularly whether transgender individuals can be identified in this way. For example, queer theorist Jack Halberstam argues that transgender men cannot be considered butch, since it constitutes a conflation of maleness with butchness. He further argues that butch–femme is uniquely geared to work in lesbian relationships. Stereotypes and definitions of butch and femme vary greatly, even within tight-knit LGBT communities. On the other hand, the writer Jewelle Gomez muses that butch and femme women in the earlier twentieth century may have been expressing their closeted transgender identity. Antipathy toward female butches and male femmes has been interpreted by some commentators as transphobia, although female butches and male femmes are not always transgender, and indeed some heterosexuals of both genders display these attributes.
Scholars such as Judith Butler and Anne Fausto-Sterling suggest that butch and femme are not attempts to take up "traditional" gender roles. Instead, they argue that gender is socially and historically constructed, rather than essential, "natural", or biological. The historian Joan Nestle argues that femme and butch may be seen as distinct genders in and of themselves.
Difference between butch and maleEdit
Although butch is a masculine identity, it isn't the same thing as conventional manhood or masculinity. There are differences, particularly in how conventional manhood and masculinity involve conformity, whereas the MOGII qualities of butch make it subversive.
Butch gender expression through clothing doesn't follow the rules for how to dress conventionally as male or masculine, and in some ways is intentionally different. Butch clothing doesn't look the same as conventional men's wear. See the main article about these clothing differences.
Masculinity is different than maleness. Butches are different than transgender men. Although transgender men were assigned female at birth (or sometimes intersex), and some identified as lesbian before recognizing that they were trans men, the difference is that butch lesbians generally identify as women, and feel attracted to women, whereas trans men identify as men, and may or may not feel attracted to women.
While the term "transgender butch" could apply to a masculine trans person, regardless of gender assigned at birth, the term is often used in a more specific sense to describe a person who was assigned female at birth, has a masculine gender expression, and experiences gender dysphoria while identifying as butch rather than male or another gender. Transgender butches may identify as genderqueer or nonbinary; some claim butch as a specific nonbinary identity. Transgender butches may also identify as lesbians or dykes independently of their gender identity. A similar term is "stone butch", which describes a butch who prefers to avoid genital stimulation in sexual settings, sometimes due to gender dysphoria.
Some women in lesbian communities eschew butch or femme classifications, believing that they are inadequate to describe an individual, or that labels are limiting in and of themselves. Other people within the LGBT community have tailored the common labels to be more descriptive, such as "soft stud," "hard butch," "gym queen," or "tomboy femme." Comedian Elvira Kurt contributed the term "fellagirly" as a description for LGBT women who are not strictly either femme or butch, but a combination. In the 1950s and 1960s, the term chi-chi was used to mean the same thing.
Those who identify as butch and femme today often use the words to define their presentation and gender identity rather than strictly the role they play in a relationship, and that not all butches are attracted exclusively to femmes and not all femmes are exclusively attracted to butches, a departure from the historic norm. Besides the terms "butch" and "femme", there are a number of other terms used to describe the dress codes, the sexual behaviours, and/or the gender identities of the sexual subcultures who use them. The meanings of these terms vary and can evolve over time.
A butch woman may be described as a "stone butch", "diesel dyke" "bulldyke", "bull bitch" or "bulldagger" or simply just as a "dyke". The term "boi" is typically used by younger LGBT women. Defining the difference between a butch and a boi, one boi told a reporter: "that sense of play - that's a big difference from being a butch. To me, butch is like an adult...You're the man of the house." There is also an emerging usage of the terms soft butch "stem" (stud-femme), "futch" (feminine butch) or "chapstick lesbian" as terms for women who have characteristics of both butch and femme. Lesbians who are unisex and neither butch nor femme are called "androgynous" or "andros".
Another common term is "stud". A stud is a dominant lesbian, usually butch. They tend to be influenced by urban and hip-hop cultures and are often, but not always, Afro-American. In the New York City lesbian community, a butch may identify herself as AG (aggressive) or as a stud. In 2005, filmmaker Eric Daniel Peddle chronicled the lives of AGs in his documentary The Aggressives, following six women who went to lengths like binding their breasts to pass as men. But Peddle says that today, very young lesbians of color in New York are creating a new, insular scene that's largely cut off from the rest of the gay and lesbian community. "A lot of it has to do with this kind of pressure to articulate and express your masculinity within the confines of the hip-hop paradigm..." The AG culture has also been represented on film by Black lesbian filmmaker Dee Rees' 2011 work, Pariah.
Going back to at least the 1960s or 50s, a "stone butch" refers a masculine lesbian, and in contemporary use is associated with impenetrability. The "stone" sexual role describes a preference for bringing pleasure to one's partner, without being touched oneself. Being "stone" in this way can be connected with sexual trauma, gender dysphoria, or the asexual spectrum.
In relation to gender, a femme lesbian named Rachel Tessler wrote in 1996 that "some stone butches are almost beyond butch. They're almost in a kind of territory between genders, beyond being women. I think some stone butches aren't really women, in the way that they think about people."
A 2001 dictionary of sex and gender terminology by linguist Philip Herbst noted that
|«||Bigendered or transgendered lesbians—individuals with [ AFAB] bodies who identify as masculine and may be attracted to other women— may call themselves stone butch [...] Stone may mean "very" in slang, but it also implies "untouchable" in a sexual sense—not wanting to be touched during sexual relations.||»|
A soft butch, or stem (stud-fem), is a lesbian who exhibits some stereotypical butch traits without fitting the masculine stereotype associated with butch lesbians. Soft butch is on the spectrum of butch, as are stone butch and masculine, whereas on the contrary, ultra fem, high femme, and lipstick lesbian are some labels on the spectrum of lesbians with a more prominent expression of femininity, also known as femmes. Soft butches have gender identities of women, but primarily display masculine characteristics; soft butches predominantly express masculinity with a touch of femininity.
The "hardness", or label depicting one's level of masculine expression as a butch is dependent upon the fluidity of her gender expression. Soft butches might want to express themselves through their clothing and hairstyle in a more masculine way, but their behavior in a more traditionally feminine way. For example, these traits of a soft butch may or may not include short hair, clothing that was designed for men, and masculine mannerisms and behaviors. Soft butches generally appear androgynous, rather than adhering to strictly feminine or masculine norms and gender identities. Soft butches generally physically, sexually, and romantically express themselves in more masculine than feminine ways in the majority of those categories.
In addition to a soft butch's gender expression through her outward appearance, she also has a distinctive way of sexually expressing herself. Soft butch women might want to have a more passive role sexually or romantically in their relationships, which is generally associated with feminine sexual behavior. This is an example of how a soft butch's sexuality and outward appearance are not completely masculine, but have some feminine traits. Conversely, stone butches are less fluid in their sexuality and do not want to receive sexual contact from their sexual partners. This desire to express both masculinity and femininity through one's gender and sexuality is clearly seen in soft butch women, but also across many people of a variety of sexual orientations.
There is no universally-accepted flag for the butch identity, but several have been proposed. Below are some of them.
Notable butch peopleEdit
There are many more notable people who have a gender identity outside of the binary. The following are only some of those notable people who specifically use the word "butch" (or a close analog to it) for themselves as a gender identity outside of the binary.
- The author Corey Alexander, who wrote under the pen name Xan West, identified as genderqueer, queer, trans, stone butch, demiromantic, and demigraysexual.
- Ivan E. Coyote (b. 1969) is a Canadian author who has written extensively about being transgender and being butch. They have made significant contributions to the representation of queerness in literature. They have won the ReLit Award for Best Fiction (2007), and the Stonewall Honor Book Award (2017). They describe themself as "a trans person who doesn't fit neatly into the gender binary," and they identify as butch.
- American comedian, writer, and nurse Kelli Dunham describes herself as a genderqueer woman/nonbinary transmasc butch.
- Leslie Feinberg (1949 - 2014) was a revolutionary communist and activist for transgender rights. Feinberg identified as a butch lesbian, in the sense of a queer masculine transgender identity neither female nor male. Feinberg's novel, Stone Butch Blues (1993) won the prestigious American Library Association Award for Gay and Lesbian Literature and a LAMBDA Literary Award (Leslie Feinberg).
- American musician and comedian Maxine Feldman (1945 - 2007) identified as a transgender butch lesbian, went by a variety of pronouns, was described as having a "both/and" gender identity, and was comfortable with being labeled as a man or woman.
- Sonalee Rashatwar is an American Licensed Clinical Social Worker who has given talks internationally about sexuality, fat positivity, disability justice, racism, and more. They identify as a soft butch enby.
- Sinclair Sexsmith is a writer and performer. They identify as a "White non-binary butch feminist dominant". Their short story collection, Sweet & Rough: Queer Kink Erotica, was a 2016 finalist for the Lambda Literary Award.
Butch characters in fictionEdit
See main article: Nonbinary gender in fiction
There are many more nonbinary characters in fiction who have a gender identity outside of the binary. The following are only some of those characters who are specifically called by the word "butch" (or a close analog to it) as a gender identity, either in their canon, or by their creators.
- Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg, a semi-autobiographical historical fiction novel about a butch named Jess Goldberg. The story focuses on the trials and tribulations she faces growing up in the United States before the Stonewall riots. Feinberg defines butch as a gender identity neither female nor male.
- Orange is the New Black included a main character, Carrie Black, who is a butch lesbian. The word "butch" is tattooed on her arm.
- An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon. The author has said, "Aster is an intersex butch lesbian, but maybe agender. Theo is a nonbinary trans woman. These are my interpretations, but arguments could certainly be made for other classifiers."
- Butchtastic: Butch, Genderqueer, Genderfluid, Genderfuck and Trans Blogs to watch out for
- Debonair Geek's Blog: Deep Thoughts
- Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
- Susan's Place Transgender Resource Wiki: Butch and Femme
- Susan's Place Transgender Resource Wiki: Soft Butch
- Susan's Place Transgender Resources Wiki: Stone Butch
- Butch Voices, "a grassroots organization dedicated to all self-identified Masculine of Center people and our Allies"
- Urquhart, Evan (24 April 2015). "A Dispatch From the Shifting, Porous Border Between Butch and Trans". Slate Magazine.
- What Is Stone? by Xan West
- Is Butch/Femme a Transgender Thang? by Lisa Lees
- Bashan, Frankie (2020). "What Does It Mean To Be Butch?". Little Gay Book. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
- Green, Eli R.; Peterson, Eric N. (2006). "LGBTTSQI Terminology" (PDF). Trans-Academics.org.
- "HER - Stud Lesbian Meaning". Her. 29 February 2020. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
- "Happy Butch Appreciation Day – here's to all the butches!". Stonewall. 16 August 2019. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
- "Lesbian Culture & Visibility". QueerEvents.ca. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
- "2015 U.S. Transgender Survey Complete Report" (PDF). p. 44. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
- Walker, Ja'nina (March 2012). "Butch Bottom–Femme Top? An Exploration of Lesbian Stereotypes". Journal of Lesbian Studies. 16 (1): 90–107. doi:10.1080/10894160.2011.557646. PMID 22239455.
- Bergman, S. Bear (2006). Butch is a noun. San Francisco: Suspect Thoughts Press. ISBN 978-0-9771582-5-6.
- Smith, Christine A.; Konik, Julie A.; Tuve, Melanie V. (2011). "In Search of Looks, Status, or Something Else? Partner Preferences Among Butch and Femme Lesbians and Heterosexual Men and Women". Sex Roles. 64 (9–10): 658–668. doi:10.1007/s11199-010-9861-8. ISSN 0360-0025. Retrieved May 1, 2016.
- "2014 National Street Harassment Report - Stop Street Harassment". stopstreetharassment.org. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
- Caramagno, Thomas C. (2002). Irreconcilable Differences? Intellectual Stalemate in the Gay Rights Debate. ABC-CLIO. p. 138. ISBN 978-0275977214.
- "About". BUTCH Voices. April 9, 2009. Archived from the original on December 19, 2018. Retrieved 11 September 2019.
- "BUTCH Voices Conference Makes Masculine Of Center Womyn Heard". Curve. May 8, 2017. Retrieved 11 September 2019.
- Caramagno, Thomas C. (2002). Irreconcilable Differences? Intellectual Stalemate in the Gay Rights Debate. ABC-CLIO. pp. 137–8. ISBN 978-0275977214.
- Munt, Sally (1998). Butch/Femme: Inside Lesbian Gender. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 229. ISBN 978-0304339594.
- Coyote, Ivan E.; Sharman, Zena, eds. (2011). "Femme Butch Feminist, by Jewelle Gomez". Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme. Vancouver, B.C., Canada: Arsenal Pulp Press. pp. 67–78. ISBN 978-1551523972.
- Tyler, Carol-Ann (2003). Female Impersonation. Routledge. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-415-91688-2.
- O'Hara, Kate (7 January 2015). "There's No Other Georgy Deep Inside – Coming Out As A Butch Straight Woman". The Vagenda. Archived from the original on 31 July 2019.
- Hunt, James (14 May 2015). "Confessions Of A Feminine Straight Guy". thoughtcatalog.com. Retrieved 20 September 2020.
- Nestle, Joan (1992). The Persistent Desire: A Femme–Butch Reader. Alyson Publications. ISBN 978-1555831905.
- Nash, Tammye (3 March 2011). "COVER STORY: Butch Voices". Dallas Voice. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
- Factora, James (10 October 2019). "Being Butch Does Not Mean I Experience Masculine Privilege". refinery29.com. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
- Lee, Atticus. "The Role of Butch/Femme Relationships in Transgender Activism: A Codependent Mutualism" (PDF).
Butch lesbians debunk the gender binary with their mere existence; they embody masculine gender presentations without possessing male privilege or participating in the dominant patriarchy.
- "Common lesbian slang and terminology". The Other Team. Archived from the original on 7 February 2020.
- Haggerty, George E. (2000). Encyclopedia of Lesbian And Gay Histories and Cultures, Vol 1. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0815333548.
- Levy, Ariel. "Where the Bois Are". New York News and Features. Retrieved November 29, 2016.
- Belge, Kathy (2011). Queer: The Ultimate LGBT Guide for Teens. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 10. ISBN 9780547687322.
- Hilliard, Chloe. "Girls to Men". The Village Voice.
- George, Nelson (December 23, 2011). "New Directors Flesh Out Black America, All Of It". New York Times. Retrieved November 29, 2016.
- Halberstam, Judith (1998). "Lesbian Masculinity: Even Stone Butches Get the Blues". Female Masculinity (1st ed.). Duke University Press. p. 111. ISBN 0822322269.
- Zimmerman, Bonnie, ed. (1999). Lesbian Histories and Cultures (1st ed.). Routledge. p. 140. ISBN 978-0815319207.
- Myers, JoAnne, ed. (2013). Historical Dictionary of the Lesbian and Gay Liberation Movements (1st ed.). Scarecrow Press. p. 346. ISBN 0810874687.
- Render Me, Gender Me: Lesbians Talk Sex, Class, Color, Nation, Studmuffins..., p. 104-105, Columbia University Press, 1996
- Herbst, Philip (2001). Wimmin, Wimps & Wallflowers: An Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Gender and Sexual Orientation Bias in the United States. p. 41.
- Smith, Christine A.; Stillman, Shannon (2003). "Do Butch and Femme Still Attract?". The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide. X (4).
- Rose, Dawn; Plaskow, Judith (2009). "Yusuf Come Home: Parashat Miketz (genesis 41:1-44:17)". Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible: 62.
- Halberstam, Judith (1998). Female Masculinity (5page=123 ed.). Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-2243-6.
- Rosario, Margaret; Schrimshaw, Eric W.; Hunter, Joyce; Levy-Warren, Anna (2007-09-26). "The Coming-Out Process of Young Lesbian and Bisexual Women: Are There Butch/Femme Differences in Sexual Identity Development?". Archives of Sexual Behavior. 38 (1): 34–49. doi:10.1007/s10508-007-9221-0. ISSN 0004-0002. PMC 3189348. PMID 17896173.
- Carpenter, Karen; McKenzie, Matthew (2011). "Love on a Continuum". Social and Economic Studies. 60 (1): 118.
- Simkiss, Ceillie. "Author Interview: Xan West". Let's Fox About It. Retrieved 5 October 2020.
- Black, Eleanor (August 20, 2016). "Ivan Coyote: 'I always knew I was not the same as other little girls'". Stuff.co.nz. Retrieved July 26, 2017. https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/books/83178100/ivan-coyote-i-always-knew-i-was-not-the-same-as-other-little-girls
- Why we need gender-neutral bathrooms, Ivan Coyote, November 2015
- "THE STORY". kellidunham.com. Retrieved 24 July 2020.
- Wood, Erin (15 May 2017). "Q&A: Comedian Kelli Dunham on Storytelling as a Radical, Transformative Act". Ms. Magazine. Retrieved 3 June 2020.
- Guerrero, Desirée (21 April 2020). "Genderqueer Comic Kelli Dunham On Getting (Thee) Away From a Nunnery". The Advocate. Retrieved 3 June 2020.
- Village Voice
- "Maxine Feldman, 1945 - 2007". Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved 8 October 2020.
- Kiritsy, Laura (August 30, 2007). "Lesbian trail blazer Maxine Feldman dies". Edge Providence.
- Owens, Cassie (3 July 2019). "To end fatphobia, we need to dismantle Western civilization, says Philly therapist Sonalee Rashatwar". The Inquirer. Retrieved 16 June 2020.
- Fabello, Melissa A. (21 May 2019). "Sonalee Rashatwar Is Returning Body Positivity to Its Political Roots". Bitch Media. Retrieved 16 June 2020.
- "Sinclair Sexsmith profile". Medium. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
- Falck, Alex (10 October 2018). "An Interview with Author Rivers Solomon". Archived from the original on 25 June 2019.


The island is east-northeast of the mainland with its northern and western coasts fronting on the Gulf of Saint Lawrence ; its western coast also forms the eastern limits of the Northumberland Strait. The eastern and southern coasts front the Atlantic Ocean; its eastern coast also forms the western limits of the Cabot Strait. Its landmass slopes upward from south to north, culminating in the highlands of its northern cape. One of the world's larger saltwater lakes, Bras d'Or "Arm of Gold" in French , dominates the island's centre. Eskasoni is the largest in both population and land area. Its name may derive from Capbreton near Bayonne , or more probably from Cape and the word Breton , the French demonym for Bretagne , the French historical region.
The eastern and southern coasts front the Atlantic Ocean; its eastern coast also forms the western limits of the Cabot Strait. Its landmass slopes upward from south to north, culminating in the highlands of its northern cape. One of the world's larger saltwater lakes, Bras d'Or "Arm of Gold" in Frenchdominates the island's centre. Eskasoni is the largest in both population and land area. Its name may derive from Capbreton near Bayonneor more probably from Cape and the word Bretonthe French demonym for Bretagnethe French historical region.
Cape Breton Island's first residents were likely Archaic maritime nativesancestors of the Mi'kmaq. These peoples and their progeny inhabited the island known as Unama'ki for several thousand years and continue to live there to this day.
Their traditional lifestyle centred around hunting and fishing because of the unfavourable agricultural conditions of their maritime home. This ocean-centric lifestyle did, however, make them among the first indigenous peoples to discover European explorers and sailors fishing in the St Lawrence Estuary.
Postcards From Cape Breton Island, documentary
John Cabot reportedly visited the island in The local Mi'kmaq peoples began trading with European fishermen when the fishermen began landing in their territories as early as the s. As many as two hundred settlers lived in a village, the name of which is not known, located according to some historians at what is now Ingonish on the island's northeastern peninsula.
These fishermen traded with the local population but did not maintain a permanent settlement. This Portuguese colony's fate is unknown, but it is mentioned as late as These claims, and larger European ideals of native conquest were the first time the island was incorporated as European territory, though it would be several decades later that treaties would actually be signed no copies of these treaties exist.
Peter's These settlements lasted only one generation, until Nicolas Denys left in The island did not have any European settlers for another fifty years before those communities along with Louisbourg were re-established inafter which point European settlement was permanently established on the island.
As the harbour at Sainte Anne experienced icing problems, it was decided to build a much larger fortification at Louisbourg to improve defences at the entrance to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and to defend France's fishing fleet on the Grand Banks. Louisbourg itself was one of the most important commercial and military centres in New France. Louisbourg was captured by New Englanders  with British naval assistance in  and by British forces in Some of the first British-sanctioned settlers on the island following the Seven Years' War were Irish, although upon settlement they merged with local French communities to form a culture rich in music and tradition.
From tothe island was administratively part of the colony of Nova Scotia  and was governed from Halifax. He spent his first winter using his upside-down boat for shelter, which is reflected in the architecture of the village's Community Centre. During the American Revolutionon 1 NovemberJohn Paul Jones - the father of the American Navy - set sail in command of Alfred to free hundreds of American prisoners working in the area's coal mines.
Although winter conditions prevented the freeing of the prisoners, the mission did result in the capture of Mellisha vessel carrying a vital supply of winter clothing intended for John Burgoyne 's troops in Canada. The British began developing the mining site at Sydney Mines in While there, Hierlihy reported that he "beat off many piratical attacks, killed some and took other prisoners.
Six French sailors were killed and 17 British, with many more wounded. He succeeded Macarmick as head of the colony and served from to From tothe military commandant was John Despar  brother of Edward.
An order forbidding the granting of land in Cape Breton, issued inwas removed in The mineral rights to the island were given over to the Duke of York by an order-in-council.
The British government had intended that the Crown take over the operation of the mines when Cape Breton was made a colony, but this was never done, probably because of the rehabilitation cost of the mines. The mines were in a neglected state, caused by careless operations dating back at least to the time of the final fall of Louisbourg in Large-scale shipbuilding began in the s, beginning with schooners for local trade moving in the s to larger brigs and brigantinesmostly built for British shipowners.
Shipbuilding peaked in the s, marked in by the full-rigged ship Lord Clarendonthe largest wooden ship ever built in Cape Breton.
Cape breton dating
This development is one of the factors which led to large-scale industrial development in the Sydney Coal Field of eastern Cape Breton County. By the late 19th century, as a result of the faster shipping, expanding fishery and industrialization of the island, exchanges of people between the island of Newfoundland and Cape Breton increased, beginning a cultural exchange that continues to this day. The s were some of the most violent times in Cape Breton. They were marked by several severe labour disputes.
The famous murder of William Davis by strike breakers, and the seizing of the New Waterford power plant by striking miners led to a major union sentiment that persists to this day in some circles.
The Cape Breton Post was founded in and is based in Sydney. It has the largest readership of any publication based in Cape Breton. Cape Breton is full of single men and women like you looking for dates, lovers, friendship, and fun. Finding them is easy with our totally FREE Cape Breton dating service. Sign up today to browse the FREE personal ads of available Nova Scotia singles, and hook up online using our completely free Cape Breton online dating service! Online Dating in CAPE BRETON for Free Meet thousands of local CAPE BRETON singles, as the worlds largest dating site we make dating in CAPE BRETON easy! Plentyoffish is Free, unlike paid dating sites. You will get more interest and responses here than all paid dating .
William Davis Miners' Memorial Day is celebrated in coal mining towns to commemorate the deaths of miners at the hands of the coal companies. The turn of the 20th century saw Cape Breton Island at the forefront of scientific achievement with the now-famous activities launched by inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Guglielmo Marconi.
Following his successful invention of the telephone and being relatively wealthy, Bell acquired land near Baddeck inlargely due to surroundings reminiscent of his early years in Scotland. He established a summer estate complete with research laboratories, working with deaf people-including Helen Keller -and continued to invent.
Baddeck would be the site of his experiments with hydrofoil technologies as well as the Aerial Experiment Associationfinanced by his wife, which saw the first powered flight in Canada when the AEA Silver Dart took off from the ice-covered waters of Bras d'Or Lake.
Consider, that cape breton dating consider
Bell also built the forerunner to the iron lung and experimented with breeding sheep. Marconi's contributions to Cape Breton Island were also quite significant, as he used the island's geography to his advantage in transmitting the first North American trans-Atlantic radio message from a station constructed at Table Head in Glace Bay to a receiving station at Poldhu in Cornwall, England.
Marconi's pioneering work in Cape Breton marked the beginning of modern radio technology. Promotions for tourism beginning in the s recognized the importance of the Scottish culture to the province, and the provincial government started encouraging the use of Gaelic once again. The establishment of funding for the Gaelic College of Celtic Arts and Crafts and formal Gaelic language courses in public schools are intended to address the near-loss of this culture to English assimilation.
In the s, the Fortress of Louisbourg was partially reconstructed by Parks Canada. Gaelic speakers in Cape Breton, as elsewhere in Nova Scotia, furnished a large proportion of the local population from the 18th century on.
Congratulate, cape breton dating thanks for the
They brought with them a common culture of poetry, traditional songs and tales, music and dance, and used this to develop distinctive local traditions. Such emigration was facilitated by changes in Gaelic society and the economy, with sharp increases in rents, confiscation of land and disruption of local customs and rights.
In Nova Scotia, poetry and song in Gaelic flourished. George Emmerson argues that an "ancient and rich" tradition of storytelling, song, and Gaelic poetry emerged during the 18th century and was transplanted from the Highlands of Scotland to Nova Scotia, where the language similarly took root there. It was reinforced in Cape Breton in the first half of the 19th century with an influx of Highland Scots numbering approximately 50, as a result of the Highland Clearances.
Gaelic speakers, however, tended to be poor; they were largely illiterate and had little access to education. This situation still obtained in the early twentieth century. In Gaelic was approved as an optional subject in the curriculum of Nova Scotia, but few teachers could be found and children were discouraged from using the language in schools.
By the number of Gaelic speakers in Nova Scotia had fallen to approximately 25, mostly in discrete pockets. In Cape Breton it was still a majority language, but the proportion was falling. Children were no longer being raised with Gaelic. From on, attempts were made to strengthen its position in the public school system in Nova Scotia, but funding, official commitment and the availability of teachers continued to be a problem.
By the s the number of speakers was less than 7, The advent of multiculturalism in Canada in the s meant that new educational opportunities became available, with a gradual strengthening of the language at secondary and tertiary level. The Canadian Census shows that there are only 40 reported speakers of Gaelic as a mother tongue in Cape Breton. They include fluent speakers from Gaelic-speaking areas of Scotland and speakers who became fluent in Nova Scotia and who in some cases studied in Scotland.
Other revitalization activities include adult education, community cultural events and publishing.
Cape Breton Island is composed mainly of rocky shores, rolling farmland, glacial valleys, barren headlands, mountains, woods and plateaus. Geological evidence suggests at least part of the island was joined with present-day Scotland and Norway, now separated by millions of years of plate tectonics. Cape Breton Island's northern portion is dominated by the Cape Breton Highlandscommonly shortened to simply the "Highlands", which are an extension of the Appalachian mountain chain.
The Highlands comprise the northern portions of Inverness and Victoria counties. The Cabot Trail scenic highway also encircles the plateau's coastal perimeter.
Cape Breton Island's hydrological features include the Bras d'Or Lake system, a salt-water fjord at the heart of the island, and freshwater features including Lake Ainsliethe Margaree River system, and the Mira River. Innumerable smaller rivers and streams drain into the Bras d'Or Lake estuary and on to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Atlantic coasts. Cape Breton Island is joined to the mainland by the Canso Causewaywhich was completed inenabling direct road and rail traffic to and from the island, but requiring marine traffic to pass through the Canso Canal at the eastern end of the causeway.
The climate is one of mild, often pleasantly warm summers and cold winters, although the proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf Stream moderates the extreme winter cold found on the mainland, especially on the east side that faces the Atlantic.
Precipitation is abundant year round, with annual totals up to 60 inches on the eastern side facing the Atlantic storms. Considerable snowfall occurs in winter, especially in the highlands.
The island's residents can be grouped into five main cultures: ScottishMi'kmaqAcadianIrish, English, with respective languages Scottish GaelicMi'kmaqFrenchand English. English is now the primary language, including a locally distinctive Cape Breton accentwhile Mi'kmaq, Scottish Gaelic and Acadian French are still spoken in some communities. Later migrations of Black LoyalistsItalians, and Eastern Europeans mostly settled in the island's eastern part around the industrial Cape Breton region.
Cape Breton Island's population has been in decline two decades with an increasing exodus in recent years due to economic conditions. Statistics Canada in reported a "religion" total offor Cape Breton, including 5, with "no religious affiliation. Sydney has traditionally been the main port, with facilities in a large, sheltered, natural harbour. The Marine Atlantic terminal at North Sydney is the terminal for large ferries traveling to Channel-Port aux Basques and seasonally to Argentiaboth on the island of Newfoundland.
Petroleum, bulk coal, and cruise ship facilities are also in Sydney Harbour. Glace Baythe second largest urban community in population, was the island's main coal mining centre until its last mine closed in the s.
Cape Breton Personals is part of the dating network, which includes many other general dating sites. As a member of Cape Breton Personals, your profile will automatically be shown on related general dating sites or to related users in the network at no additional charge. CAPE BRETON Local Singles interested in Online Dating On mcauctionservicellc.com you message thousands of other local singles. Online dating via plentyoffish doesn't cost you a dime. Paid dating sites can end up costing you hundreds of dollars a year without a single date. More than 50 women in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality are asking themselves one question: Where are all the single men? Kim MacDonald, owner of the Queen of All Hearts Dating Services, had.
At one time, Glace Bay was known as the largest town in Nova Scotia, based on population. Port Hawkesbury has risen to prominence since the completion of the Canso Causeway and Canso Canal created an artificial deep-water port, allowing extensive petrochemical, pulp and paper, and gypsum handling facilities to be established. The Strait of Canso is completely navigable to Seawaymax vessels, and Port Hawkesbury is open to the deepest-draught vessels on the world's oceans.
Peters Canal. While commercial shipping no longer uses the St.
Congratulate, cape breton dating consider, that you
Peters Canal, it remains an important waterway for recreational vessels. In recent years, the Island's residents have tried to diversify the area economy by investing in tourism developments, call centresand small businesses, as well as manufacturing ventures in fields such as auto parts, pharmaceuticals, and window glazings.
While the Cape Breton Regional Municipality is in transition from an industrial to a service-based economy, the rest of Cape Breton Island outside the industrial area surrounding Sydney-Glace Bay has been more stable, with a mixture of fishing, forestry, small-scale agriculture, and tourism.
Tourism in particular has grown throughout the post-Second World War era, especially the growth in vehicle-based touring, which was furthered by the creation of the Cabot Trail scenic drive.
The scenery of the island is rivalled in northeastern North America by only Newfoundland ; [ citation needed ] and Cape Breton Island tourism marketing places a heavy emphasis on its Scottish Gaelic heritage through events such as the Celtic Colours Festival, held each October, as well as promotions through the Gaelic College of Celtic Arts and Crafts. Whale-watching is a popular attraction for tourists.
Whale-watching cruises are operated by vendors from Baddeck to Cheticamp.
The most popular species of whale found in Cape Breton's waters is the Pilot whale. The island's primary east-west road is Highwaythe Trans-Canada Highwayalthough Trunk 4 is also heavily used.
The Cabot Trailcircling the Cape Breton Highlands, and Trunk 19along the island's western coast, are important secondary roads. The Cabot Trail is a scenic road circuit around and over the Cape Breton Highlands with spectacular coastal vistas; overvisitors drive the Cabot Trail each summer and fall.
Coupled with the Fortress of Louisbourgit has driven the growth of the tourism industry on the island in recent decades. Cape Breton is well known for its traditional fiddle music, which was brought to North America by Scottish immigrants during the Highland Clearances.
Inverness County in particular has a heavy concentration of musical activity, with regular performances in communities such as Mabou and Judique. The Margaree's of Cape Breton also serve as a large contributor of fiddle music celebrated throughout the island. This traditional fiddle music of Cape Breton is studied by musicians around the world, where its global recognition continues to rise.
The Men of the Deeps are a male choral group of current and former miners from the industrial Cape Breton area. People from Cape Breton have also achieved a number of firsts in Canadian politics and governance. He accurately predicted a magnitude 7 earthquake in New Zealand in November Director Ashley McKenzie 's film Werewolf is set on the island and features local actors; McKenzie grew up on the island.
Bruce Guthro ; Lead singer and guitarist of the former Scottish Celtic band Runrigwhich disbanded in after 46 years. Guthro resides in Hammonds Plains, Nova Scotia. Dylan Guthro ; musician. Son of Bruce Guthro. Cabot's Landing, Victoria County, commemorating the "first land seen" by explorer John Cabot in Cape Breton Highlands National Park. Smelt Brook on the northern shore.
There are plenty of people eager to make new connections on Plenty of Fish. Online Dating in CAPE BRETON for Free The only Free Online Dating site for dating, love, relationships and friendship. Register HERE and chat with other CAPE BRETON . A lot of people live in Cape Breton, and a lot of those are in unhappy marriages, longing to meet somebody new to break the boredom and have an illicit affair with. Start meeting new people in CAPE BRETON with POF! Start browsing and messaging more singles by registering to POF, the largest dating site in the world.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Cape Breton disambiguation.
Island in Nova Scotia. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources.
Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. January Learn how and when to remove this template message.
Can cape breton dating congratulate, your idea
Want to see more of our members in Cape Breton? Vew Horny Womenor Horny Men. It's all to do with preference, but it helps to find sex near you and in your own age group, then go from there. Our members are either married or looking for married palymates in the Cape Breton area.
Use the form opposite to see a preview of our latest sign-ups A lot of people live in Cape Breton, and a lot of those are in unhappy marriages, longing to meet somebody new to break the boredom and have an illicit affair with.
That's why we're here, Affair Buddy is a confidential dating and introduction service tailored to the needs of single and married women and men looking for sexual encounters behind closed doors. Our service is simple to use, allowing your secret affair dating life to fit around your busy working and family life. Sign up todaylogin from anywhere on a computer, laptop or mobile phone, and find out what what you're missing. Join, browse and hook up from your computer, tablet or mobile phone. No need for intrusive apps with Affair Buddy, just log in with your browser to collect all your messages from admirers wh have drooled over your profile.