Words to Lose
Or at Least to Excuse From Your Writing
Rules are meant to be broken. No, they really are.
Something you learn being an editor by trade—well, something I learned. Something I wish people learned? Something more people ought to learn, anyway—is that you don’t police people’s grammar, word use, and spelling when you’re communicating with them, unless they’ve asked for your help teaching them.
When we’re talking with each other, whether aloud or in writing, we are not generating content for publication so the output need not be “publication quality.” When writing for publication or speaking for a large audience then we have a need to be as clear and correct as possible so that we can be understood by as much of the audience as possible. When speaking with a handful of friends or internet associates we have no such need. If someone says something to you and you understood them, then their communication was successful. There is no need to correct it, even if it didn’t meet some arbitrary language standard (and all language standards are arbitrary).
Herewith, a brief list of things you cannot accomplish via correcting someone’s grammar and usage in casual conversation or on the internet:
Win friends
Influence people
Dismantle their argument
If you refer to yourself as a grammar Nazi, or a grammar fascist of any kind, I would love to know why you associate yourself with Nazis and fascists.
That’s the preface to today’s article. What I intended to say was: Policing people’s use of language should be reserved for when it matters and when they have requested policing (editing or language education). Insisting that all language you see and hear must conform to a particular set of standards is colonial. Editors provide a valuable service by imposing corrections using their knowledge of those standards. Both things can be true at the same time.
Plus if you’re good at something maybe don’t do it for free during your off hours. As I always say, if you want me to tell you that humankind, generally, is garbage, you can read my Twitter feed. If you want me to tell you that you, specifically, are garbage, you’ve got to subscribe to my OnlyFans. That way I can get paid for the valuable service I am good at providing and also I don’t have to guess whether someone wants to be told they are garbage.
I’m just kidding, there’s no OnlyFans. Or is there?
Writing for publication takes communication to another level. When we write to publish, we put our best work forward not only in terms of conveying meaning clearly and unmistakably but also doing so in a way that is pleasing to the reader, choosing the most appropriate words to vary sentence length and rhythm and deliver sense and connotation. Sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s not; that’s just how it is.
Today I’m here with some words to evict from your writing, as a rule. When I say “as a rule,” what I mean is—when you bring these words into your manuscript, do so deliberately, with intention. These words are like vampires. They can’t come in unless you invite them. They are appealing, attractive, but once they’re in your writing they drain the lifeblood from the text around them. Would you invite a vampire to cross your threshold? Not unless you were very sure you could control them.
As I was saying, rules are meant to be broken. None of the words I discuss today are verboten. I find, however, many developing writers (and even some experienced writers) lean on these words to the point of overreliance and their writing could be improved by cutting back.
Really, Very
A common refrain in the writing community is “-ly adverbs are bad, don’t use them.” That’s terrible advice. Every writer uses -ly adverbs. That we shouldn’t use them at all is a distortion produced by people parroting back a summary of what they’ve been told, without understanding it. “Adverbs that end in -ly are bad, don’t use them” is what you get when you read the headline but skip the article, thinking you’ve absorbed all the information there was to be had.
The correct advice: Don’t overuse -ly adverbs (or any one type of linguistic construction); if you’re repeatedly using the structure [-ly adverb]+[adjective] as an intensifier (eg, “really smart,” “incredibly cool,” “extremely fast”), then you should probably ease up on these and use fewer.
Whenever you use an adverb to intensify an adjective or a verb, there is always a more specific adjective or verb you could have used. Something that is “very fast” could be “rapid”; a person who “quickly moved” may have “hustled.” A person who is “really smart” is “brilliant.” An “incredibly cool” outfit might be “sophisticated” while an “incredibly cool” room is “freezing.”
Most of the time, when someone chirps “don’t use adverbs in your writing!” what they are trying to communicate is the above—don’t overuse adverbs as intensifiers, use them sparingly and when needed to convey specific shades of meaning, and replace them with more descriptive adjectives and verbs when possible.
A great place to use intensifying adverbs is in dialogue. A character with a vast vocabulary may not use them often or at all, preferring instead to show off their proficiency with the language by choosing more specific words. Another character might speak more simply for various reasons—maybe they’re less interested in all the nuances of language; or maybe they speak first and consider their words think second; or maybe they’re speaking to a person with less expertise in the language with themself (such as a child).
Here’s an example from a Harry Potter movie (I can’t say for sure if it was in the book as well because I didn’t check). Harry has spent a few days lurking around a muggle coffee shop and when he finally scores a date with the cute waitress, Dumbledore ruins his plans by whisking him away to do some magic stuff. Dumbledore apologizes for thwarting Harry’s date because, he says, “She was, truthfully, very pretty.”
For your consideration: Is this bad writing? The example has two intensifying adverbs preceding the adjective “pretty.” The writer could have put one word in Dumbledore’s mouth to do the work of the three used here: Gorgeous, beautiful, stunning, lovely, striking, dazzling, ravishing. There are lots of choices.
However, there’s a slightly different nuance of meaning to the phrase “truthfully very pretty” versus any of the adjectives I suggested. Without context or subtext, they mean the same thing. They mean the young woman being described is physically attractive.
But in context, an adult (elderly, in fact) man, a teacher, is speaking to a young man, his student, about a potential romantic conquest. It would be kind of icky if the elder had thought about the young woman’s appearance enough to put a finer point on it. Like, a 100-plus-year-old man telling his 17-year-old student that the 17-year-old barista he’s been eying is “gorgeous” or “ravishing” would be gross.
Further, intensifying adverbs can give the impression that the speaker (a character or narrator) is being misleading or untruthful. If I told you that we need to have an “extremely important meeting” or that the concept I am going to teach you is “really very simple,” you might get an impression that I’m using the words ironically (the meeting will not be important and the concept is not simple) or that I’m verbally doubling down to convince you (that the meeting is important or the concept is simple) of something you have reason to doubt.
All told, intensifier adverbs tend to have the opposite effect of what you intend. On their face, taken literally, they boost whatever they are modifying; in reality, they can have a weakening or lessening effect instead. They water down what they modify, they drain it of vitality. The prospect of a girl being “truthfully very pretty” is much less exciting than a girl who is “gorgeous.”
The Dumbledore example is an illustration of how to load up on intensifying adverbs effectively—understand that they can have a diluting effect on the surrounding words, or can convey a subtle intent to mislead or manipulate, and use them accordingly.
To sum up: Reserve intensifier adverbs for dialogue when it’s in character; to convey subtle irony or untruth; or when you’ve diligently chosen descriptive, nuanced adjectives and verbs and you want to break up the rhythm of the text with a different construction.
That Thing I Do
I’m not the best person to advise you on eliminating excess thats from your writing because this is a big writing sin for me. One of you actually wrote me to tell me to stop using “that” so much. It’s okay, you didn’t need to tell me. I already knew. Listen, a woman with no vices has few virtues. Vices make people interesting. Try to have at least one or two. I’ve quit smoking and drinking so my new thing is overusing “that.”
Like intensifier adverbs—of which that is sometimes one!—that is a word that gets an unfairly bad rap. Sometimes you need it—what if the prior sentence had read, “that is a word gets an unfairly bad rap”?—but many times you don’t. Overuse of that is a situation where there are a few fairly easy ways to figure out whether you need it or not in an individual instance if you can spare the time.
That can function as any of four different parts of speech:
Pronoun, of the demonstrative sort, alongside “this” and “these”—“get that out of here”
Conjunction, like “and,” connecting two clauses—“I didn’t realize that we were going outside”
Adjective, a determiner used to modify a noun—“that girl is so annoying”
Adverb, used to quantify degree—“it’s not that serious”
When you’re using that as a pronoun or an adjective, you probably need it. For instance, if there was a book about Ayn Rand in my office that my colleague hated because the photo of Ayn Rand on the cover had a particularly intense gaze and the eyes seemed to follow you, she might ask me to get rid of it. “Oh my gosh, the Ayn Rand book again?” She might say, “Get that out of here!” In this example, the word “that” is required to specify what needs to be gotten out of here (the book). If she simply said “Get out of here!” the sentence takes a completely different meaning. Likewise, as a determining adjective: “I hate that book, the cover is so creepy!” You can’t imply omit that—“I hate book” isn’t correct unless you’re paying homage to Steve Carell’s “I love lamp.”
On the other hand, when using that as a conjunction you almost never need it. “She said that he looked good” and “She said he looked good” have the same meaning, the latter is just less wordy. “It’s something that I’ve always known” versus “It’s something I’ve always known”; same thing. As with intensifying adverbs, while you almost never need to use that as a conjunction connecting two clauses, you might sometimes pop it in there to vary the cadence of your sentences. It’s not wrong to use that as a conjunction; you just don’t want to overuse it.
In between these two uses—the one you usually need and the one you usually don’t—is that as an intensifying adverb. As discussed at length earlier—you don’t always want to use an adverb to convey degree; sometimes it’s better to use a more descriptive adjective or verb.
However, intensifier adverbs can convey shades of meaning, especially in dialogue, and especially this one. For example, if someone uses the phrase, “it’s not serious” or “it’s not very serious,” I take that to have a different meaning than “it’s not that serious.” In the latter phrase, the use of that conveys a nuance that the person being spoken to was taking something too seriously and is being chided to take it less seriously. The previous examples (“it’s not serious” or “it’s not very serious”) inform the person being spoken to that something is not serious, but they do not give any information about how serious they may have been taking it before they were informed of the correct amount of seriousness.
There’s a quick way to figure out whether you need a that or whether to drop it. First, delete it and read the sentence to yourself out loud. If it still conveys everything you intended, you can leave that that on the cutting room floor.
Avoid the construction “that that” at all costs (eg, “I didn’t know that that would be something I’d need”). There’s always a way to write around it.
Things and Stuff
The thing of it is, it’s the word thing. English speakers use thing all the time. It’s a great catchall term that can mean nothing or anything. It can stand in for just about any noun or jump in to make a sentence extra complex for no reason.
“Give me that thing over there.”
“Did you get that thing I sent you?”
“Hey let me tell you something.”
“Here’s the thing.”
If you’ve never watched Bojack Horseman, there’s a scene in which the phrase “here’s the thing” is rightly dragged because, Herb explains, “You don't need to introduce the concept that there's going to be a thing.”
Thing, and it’s plural counterpart stuff (and things), are shortcuts we use to skip over the work of finding the right noun—just like intensifier adverbs let us skip over the work of finding the right adjective or verb. There is often (but not always) a better and more descriptive word to use. In the case of “Let me tell you something,” I could instead say:
“Let me tell you a secret.” (In which thing is a secret.)
“Let me give you some advice.” (In which thing is some advice.)
“Let me tell you about Maryland. We’re more like ‘the Old Bay State’ than ‘the Crab State.’” (In which thing is a fun fact about Maryland.)
Even when thing is affixed to another word, like “everything” or “anything,” it’s usually a shortcut. “We put Old Bay on everything” means we put Old Bay on all our food. We don’t put it on, for instance, our cars or our state bird, the Oriole. There’s usually a better, more accurate, and more descriptive word than thing.
When writing dialogue, though, don’t shun thing. As I mentioned above, people use it in speech and you could end up with unnatural-sounding characters if you go through your manuscript searching-and-replacing every instance of thing. As with the other structures I discussed today, use thing carefully and intentionally. Don’t use it as a shortcut—use it for characters who take verbal shortcuts, but don’t take the shortcut yourself.
A related topic coming soon to Shelf Life is how to build a concordance of terms you lean on too heavily and how to use it to retrain yourself to stop relying on them so much. I hope you’ll stay tuned because I think that will be very handy! In the mean time, stay cool and warm and healthy.
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