Stimulate and stimulus, is there a difference? There is a drastic difference if we use stimulus as a verb (stimulate).
We were trying to come up with a a headline regarding a 890 million Illinois stimulus plan for food stamps.
The way we use our words can have a big effect on the way people take things. How does "Illinois stimulates" sound in comparison to "an Illinois stimulus?" We discussed it in our group and came up with the conclusion that stimulate can bring a different connotation to the actual meaning of the headline and it can actually confuse people.
There are many words that can be take in a different context if used in another tense. I'm really glad we had a discussion about it today because it taught me a lesson regarding word usage in headine and in stories over all. As journalist we have to try to be as clear as possible without confusing our readers.
I completely agree with this post, and I loved that I was in the stimulate/stimulus group. This discussion taught me quite a bit, too. While I did think that saying "Illinois stimulates" could bring a different connotation to what we were actually trying to say, I didn't say it right away. As soon as Tom brought it up, though, I ran with it. It's funny to me how different two extremely similar words can be. No wonder English is a difficult language to learn...
ReplyDeleteI thought this was an interesting exercise also. It's hard to know if your headline is good when you don't have other ones to compare it with.
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