"Devaluing Words"

In college, an English professor very passionately said she hates when people used the word "impact" to mean anything less than a physical collision, like a car crash. She didn't like it when people used it to mean "influence" or "effect." For instance, a person who says "Wow, that really impacted me" means that a thing said or done influenced, in a good way, the thinking of a person on a certain topic or helped them feel better about things.

My professor would probably describe this "misuse" of the word as devaluing the word and ultimately the English language.

I would disagree. In one way, I agree that it might cause less clarity—but often in language you take meaning from context. So if you do that, it's pretty clear what a person is saying.

The reason I disagree is "impact" used in that way (as "influence") is used in a metaphorical sense. The impact wasn't physical; it was mental or emotional. A person did or said something that really effected someone intellectually or emotionally. A bulldozer of a thought can really challenge a person's worldview; it can knock down part of the worldview's structure—taking down a piece out of it, this slightly unrealistic view of reality in someone's mind.

Christopher Johnson writes in Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little that much of everyday use of language has metaphors in it. When we talk about ideas, this often happens. "The thought hit me that ... " "Hit me" is a metaphor because a thought can't hit, but these words describe how it felt.

Also, Johnson says that metaphors like this are a good part of language. It brings mental color and pictures to thought in everyday conversations and writing.

I found this helpful in thinking through how to write well. Good writing includes those metaphors. Those everyday idioms. And yeah, of course—adding mental color and pictures sounds like art—so let's do it. Or do it more.

It's freeing—now I don't feel like my writing has to be so formal that I have to take it all out. Let language and metaphor live.