Why I Write for 12-Year-Olds

I’m not writing YA nonfiction. I just don’t want to limit my audience by turning people off.

The average 20-year-old American supposedly knows about 42,000 English words, by one count. This is a hard thing to determine, so other estimates vary. This tally excludes proper nouns and “derived words” like “helplessly,” from “help”), per a write-up in Science. It’s a spectrum, of course: 20-year-olds in the Top 5% know around 52,000 words, and those in the bottom 5% know about 27,000. By age 60, the overall average rises from 42,000 to 48,000.

I’m in my 60s. I don’t know if I achieved or exceeded 48,000 or not, but frankly that number seems inflated. There are a lot of words that I know are words, but I don’t really know what they mean, or I think I do until I look them up. Whatever, I’m confident I’ve topped out, since for every new word or term that goes in, another seems to vacate to make room.

Whatever the case, what’s important to know is that we don’t all know the same words.

I know a lot of words and terms related to health, science, running, the lumber industry, and the craft of writing. A lawyer friend of mine doesn’t know all the words I know, but he knows a bunch I don’t. Sports fans know a whole basket of weird words and descriptive terms that nobody else needs to know. Corporate executives have entire vocabularies nobody else wants to hear.