What did you think when you saw the word “silly” in the title? Did you think this post would be lighthearted? Maybe funny? Perhaps you thought this would be a post you could do perfectly well without, like a video of cats playing patty cake.

Not so fast. This post could help you write better, so that whatever you compose at work or school is crisp, clear, clean, and accurate, making you the Doyen(ne) of Diction, the Wizard of Word Choice, the Viceroy of Verbs. Let me show you what I mean:

You can go to the fair.

You may go to the fair.

You should go to the fair.

Three identical sentences, but when you swap out the verbs, the meaning changes. “You can go to the fair” gives you casual permission to attend. Or it means you are capable of going—you have a car, right? (We could get into emphasis—YOU can go to the fair but I’ve got to stay home and milk the cows; You can GO to the fair but you won’t like it; you can go to the FAIR, but not to the rodeo—but let’s keep it simple for now.)

“You may go to the fair” is more formal. It’s parental-type permission: you’ve made a request, your request has been considered and weighed against your faithfulness in performing your appointed tasks along with your avoidance of transgressions, and you have been found worthy of receiving Fair Attendance Permission.

“You should go to the fair” is advice. Feeling sad? You should go to the fair, eat a couple corn dogs, ride the Ferris wheel--come on, snap out of it! Or the verb “should” is a recommendation by someone who’s already been there: you should go to the fair because they’ve got a primate exhibit with an actual live Silverback gorilla who signs “Get me outa here” in ASL.

Plug in other verbs—must, might, will—and see how the meaning changes yet again. Add the adverb “not” and change it up yet again.

What’s going on here is diction, which is the choice and use of words in speaking or writing. Diction demonstrates how you were educated and whether you listened in class. It shows how you think. Diction shows whether you’re a hothead whose imprecise communiques full of errors embarrass management or a cool, careful communicator who thinks before you speak or write and therefore can be trusted to represent the company on a junket to Taiwan. Choosing the best word makes you a better employee.

You think I’m joking? Not at all. Employers say effective communication is the number one skill they want to see in employees.

 According to Us New and World Report/Money, 98 percent of employers surveyed said they consider communication skills to be essential. Kimberly Palmer adds in her article that Dan Schawbel, founder of Millennial Branding, defines communication skills as “the ability to write, compose emails, give presentations in front of others, and being able to have conversations with those across generations.” The National Association of Colleges and Employers rates “Ability to verbally communicate with persons inside and outside the organization” as the number one skill employers seek in job candidates. Also in the top 10: Ability to create and/or edit written reports. Both of those skills entail word choice.

Doctors Katharine and Randall Hansen of  Quintessential Careers say “the one skill mentioned most often by employers is the ability to listen, write, and speak effectively” and suggest a job-seeker highlight this skill on his or her resume by saying something like “Exceptional listener and communicator who effectively conveys information verbally and in writing.”

But if you say you're an exceptional communicator and it isn’t true, you will be found out, my friend, and you will be despised, shamed, and forbidden from going on the junket to Taiwan, if you ever get out of the office pool in the first place. Don’t say you can “convey ideas effectively” if you can’t, but don’t despair either. Although language is acquired over a lifetime, you can start improving your diction right now.

First, start using a thesaurus. Most computers have one built in to their editing programs, but I recommend buying a paperback thesaurus, a little one that you keep at your desk or in your backpack. Consult it regularly, even if you elect not to use any of the synonyms it lists for the initial word you chose. Why a hard copy? Because a hard copy on your desk shows the world that you care about language; because its innards may-can-should offer tangible evidence in your communications that you, my friend, are the go-to wordsmith of your organization; but most importantly, because seeing the cover will remind you to Stop and Think and Peruse before you hit Send. So buy a copy and keep it close. Go ahead—wear your heart on your sleeve. Your desk. Whatever. As a new convert to Thesaurusism, your writing may be excessively verbose or wordy at first, but pretty soon you'll throttle down to a more manageable groove.

A second way to boost your ability to use language effectively is to start reading. Turn off the TV, the computer, the video game. Read for twenty minutes to start, so you don’t get twitchy. Read on the subway instead of listening to your music—or in addition to it. Read just before bed. Listen to a book on tape on your commute or your daily run. There are plenty of ways to get words into your life, and the payoff is astonishing.

Lifehack says reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body, and among the ten benefits it suggests reading can bring to your life is vocabulary expansion, which aids word choice. (Lana Winter-Hebert also says reading improves your focus, makes you more analytical, and reduces stress. Those are decent rewards for an activity that doesn’t have to cost you a dime and can be done anywhere, anytime.)

These two little things—reading regularly and using a thesaurus--will improve your ability to communicate in less than a year. If they don’t, I can-may-should eat my hat.

But I probably won't. That would be silly.

Yesterday I emailed a proposal for a presentation I’d like to give at a conference next summer. In the seconds before I hit SEND, my heart sped up. I knew this would be a fun program for me to put together and that my topic (“Mapping the Past”) would be interesting for my audience. I’d never seen the city—or even the state--in which the conference will be held. I knew doing a presentation at this conference would be good for my career. Freeze-frames of myself laughing and making others laugh during this presentation popped into my brain. I wanted to hit SEND.

But I also did not want to hit SEND. If my proposal were accepted, I’d have to do a ton of research on top of the research I already do. If accepted, I’d have to burn videos and pictures to a DVD, and did I remember how to do that? What if I had an equipment failure once I started the presentation and had to illustrate my talk without my slides—could I draw a map of 18th century London freehand on a white board? If I got a green light to do the talk, I’d have to add hours of practice into my daily routine, because the best talks (like the best performances) seem effortless only because they are based on hours and hours of rehearsal. And what if, after all my prep, I froze in front of the crowd anyway? That’s happened to many a seasoned performer.

Yet performers keep putting themselves in front of audiences even though “what if?” becomes an obsession for some, like the guy who can’t keep his tongue from poking at a cavity or the kid who won’t stop picking at a scab on his knee. “What if” goes like this:  What if the special effect that explains the whole plot doesn’t go off? What if somebody on stage with me enters too late or too early or forgets his lines? What if I forget my words? Barbra Streisand famously forgot some lyrics in 1967 in Central Park and stopped performing for three decades because of it. Her problem: a late-career case of stage fright.

Streisand is not alone. Actors Ian Holm, Laurence Olivier, Hayden Panettiere, and Meryl Streep, along with singers Adele, Cher, and Renee Fleming, also have experienced stage fright. Singer Carly Simon’s stage fright was so bad, according to the New Yorker, that she once resorted to getting her band members to spank her before a performance to snap her out of it.

According to Backstage, a publication for performers, stage fright is common among working actors. Dr. Gordon Goodman, who sings, acts, lectures, writes, and works as media and entertainment psychologist, says fear of the future occurs in the same part of the brain where imagination lives, which can be debilitating for work that relies on imagination.  

But it’s a little different for writers, right? Writers don’t have to worry about performing in front of an audience. We can write the same sentence over and over for an entire day and nobody will care, unless we’re on deadline and our editors are drumming their fingers watching their screens for an email with an attachment.  Still, unlike performers, writers don’t have to worry about memorizing lines or learning lyrics or reading music or Teleprompters.  We just have to face a big, empty stretch of paper or a blank computer screen every day. We have to put Something on that Nothing, and whatever Something we place on that Nothing has to be interesting and true and meaningful and funny and dramatic and marketable. We take daubs of clay and make them into people. We build houses of paper and make them into homes or torture chambers. Piece of cake.

Right. Unlike a stage performer, though, we have no Little Helpers unless you count the dictionary. All we have is whatever is in our heads.

This can be daunting. Some writers grapple with writer’s block, which according to Mark McGuinness is similar to stage fright because both require the sufferer to break through a barrier that is more mental than physical.  In both cases, McGuinness says, the artist should use his or her imagination to break through the mental block. “Remember what it was like the last time you broke through the mental barriers and found yourself in creative flow,” he says. “Take a few moments to remember the sense of ease and pleasure, and notice the kind of images the memory conjures up in your mind.”

Basically, fight fire with fire. Use the power of your mind to vanquish the power of your mind. Game yourself.  

Sound crazy? Perhaps, but being a creative artist of any flavor forces a person to wrap his head around contradictory states. She needs to perform but dreads it; he exudes confidence one day and curls up into a ball of “I don’ wannanahnah!” the next; she wants to sing her latest and greatest from the housetops early in the day, but by afternoon, she’s looking for a bonfire to toss it onto so she’s got enough ashes to dump on her head.

Did God have stage fright or writer’s block? Knowing what Creation would evolve into—road rage, pollution, war, murder, library fines—did God rear back and think, “Why bother?”

Obviously not. God took a risk. God knew that in addition to the bad things, there would be love, songbirds, monarch butterflies, and homemade apple pie.

Stage fright is what you feel when you take a risk. Sending out your stories for others to read is a risk. Getting past your fear long enough to take that risk not knowing where you’ll end up or how it will turn out is a kind of courage, according to Brené Brown, whose fantastic TED talk “The Power of Vulnerability” may change your life. Access it here, and then, please, tell me what you think.

What I remind myself when I experience stage fright is this: the times I take a risk, the times I don’t know what I’m heading into, the times I’ve prepped as best I can but have to apply my skills to a new situation—those are the times I grow the most.

Hope to see myself—and you--in Denver next June.