Day 1 Academic Vocabulary: why should you stop using 'soar' and 'plummet' in an academic-style essay?
When describing figures, we may often use the following verb-adverb phrases:
increase dramatically
rise steadily
decrease significantly
fall gradually
Or adjective-noun phrases:
a dramatic increase
a steady rise
a significant decrease
a gradual fall
These phrases are fine, and I use them all the time. However, some people would argue that these words are not "diverse" or "advanced" enough to impress others and themselves, and they'll end up using words like this:soar, rocket, shoot up, creep up, dive, plummet.
As a result, their essays would sound stange, forced and unnatural. The problem with those words is that they are too figurative for an academic-style report. Think about the normal use of these verbs (e.g. the bird soared into the air, the climber plummeted to his death). If you use these words to describe figures on a graph, it seems too sensational or exaggerated. This is why I prefer to stick with increase, decrease, rise and fall.
So can we ever use these words to describe figures?
If you're writing for a newspaper, yes you can! You'll often see phrases like this in newspapers: house prices soared, share prices plummeted, the price of petrol crept up, etc. Newspapers and magazines love idiomatic and descriptive language, but this style does not suit academic graph descriptions.
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