Avoid Frankenwords—words stitched awkwardly together to create something of an ugly, monstrous mess.

Such words often have extra parts fused to the start or end of them to create weird or unrecognizable versions of themselves.

You see them bulked up with –ment, -tion, -sion, –ance, –ism, -ize or -ization. They usually don't need the extra padding.

The simplest version of a word is the strongest version of a word. This is especially true of verbs: Not all words with those suffixes are terrible. But we can usually find a simpler version of a word not camouflaged by the extra letters and syllables.

An actual sentence I read in my inbox this morning:

The prioritization of the people our candidate represents focuses on the revolutionized future, free of commercialization.

It hurts just typing that. Prioritization, revolutionized, commercialization … all Frankenwords. All unnecessarily bulked up.

That's an extreme example. Yet sometimes Frankenwords creep in more quietly.

• Franken-creep: “Rudolph made an application for the job of lead reindeer.” De-Frankened: “Rudolph applied for the lead reindeer job.”
• Franken-creep: “There is no differentiation between a sweet potato and a yam.” De-Frankened: “There is no difference between a sweet potato and a yam.”

Also, run as far as you can from words pretending to be something they are not:

• Nouns masquerading as verbs or gerunds. As in: workshopping, journaling. Also: leverage; incentivize, bucketize.
• Verbs or gerunds disguised as nouns. As in: learnings, or (I also just read this one!) the solvings to a math problem. Ew.