Let’s talk collocation…

Collocation is fascinating to me, as a writer. For those who don’t know (and I’ll use my own simplistic explanation, which might be all wrong but it’s how I see it) collocation is when certain words are grouped together to make a ‘usual sentence’. So, if someone says, ‘I’ll make a nice cup of…’ most people would finish that sentence with tea/coffee. If you’re of a certain age, you might remember a TV show called Blankety Blank – where a celebrity panel would try to guess what the missing words were, and then the contestants would try to guess what the celebrities had written. Well, that’s collocation for ya!

As writers, we can REALLY use this to shake up our work. By being aware of collocation, and deliberately going against it, we make our work more interesting. For example, if I was writing a piece and I started with this: