As a side note, I was always amused by the number of generic superlatives available in many languages. In English, we've already got "very", and "damn" as the site mentions, along with "really", "extremely", "amazingly" and so on. In British English, you can say "bloody" or "damnedly" or "shockingly" or "terribly" or any of a vast number of other superlatives, not to ignore the crass "fucking".
My favourite has to be the French "vachement", which could be translated as "cowly".
You're then in a grey area of synonyms, it's not always hierarchical. If you're in a race for superlatives, then it's time to get creative. You could try: "paralyzed with terror".
Keep in mind that, however "vachement" may sound, it is (very) familiar — almost slang.
It comes from "vache", which is the French noun for "cow", but can also be used familiarly as an adjective that roughly translates to "nasty".
If you enjoyed "vachement", you will be happy to know that the French noun "bœuf" (the second letter is made of an O and an E), which became "beef" in English, can also be used familiarly as an adjective meaning something along "intense".
This naturally lends itself to being implemented inside a tool that searches for the word "very" in a text and if the next word is one of those listed, replaces both with that occurrence.
Yeah, the list of alternates doesn't do much for me, but the notion of doing an edit pass looking for "very" so I can spot bad sentences does sound useful.
Especially in certain situations like "I'm not very tired".
Offhand you could say "I'm not overly tired" or "I'm not too tired", but those could subtly change the meaning of what you're trying to say or sound unnatural in everyday speech.
Both of those are modifiers as well, and could fall victim to the same overuse. The only surefire remedy is picking more words that describe a variety of degrees of tiredness.
This reminds me of an English teacher I had in high school who disallowed us from using a list of banned words in a writing assignment. In previous assignments students had overused them to pad their word count and to inflate the apparent sophistication of their vocabulary. Among these words were "basically" and "essentially" which he told us were garbage words (as far as essay-writing as concerned). It stuck with me.
There seem to be many words which are useful in conversation but for whatever reason are not that good for efficient writing, or so overused in speech (for lack of better words as one scrambles for word choice in real time) that it's hard to avoid using them in writing.
See also: "really" and "actually". An easy way to improve your writing is to do a quick edit and remove all instances of these no-op words then go back and adjust.
Indeed. Even if you're using a "better" word than "really" or "very" or what-have-you excess repetition of any word will dull the quality of the writing so it's a good thing to watch out for.
And it may seem that this is a mistake that is difficult to make but because of the difference between writing and reading, where one may spend many minutes or even hours writing something that only takes a few seconds to read, it's easy to forget that you've repeated a word too often.
Rules like these aren't really good guide to style though. They are the sort of guidelines suited to curing teenagers of bad habits. That's the problem I have with articles like these. They aren't adult discussions of language; they do not teach effective writing, and do not promote an understanding of language. One should ideally outgrow such pedagogy by one's second year of college.
I understood that as a temporary constraint, not as a rule. More like "you used this style a lot during the last assignment, this time, try something different". Working under temporary constraints does promote learning different aspects of a skill.
The key is to learn to write well before becoming a staff writer at the Economist. These guidelines are fine, but all of these nonos have good uses when used appropriately. Some of these guidelines even create imprecision or run counter to general usage.
My father (an ex-English teacher) used to always say something like "concision is rarely wrong, unless it ruins precision."
Ideally. But when I took my cross-discipline gen-ed requirements, I was pretty amazed how little & how low-quality writing was expected of at least some of the humanities first & second years. Not much chance for growth when assigning a two-page paper is enough to provoke upset.
I also noticed this in my undergrad. In my second semester gen English, a 5 page minimally researched paper was enough to get people pretty upset, while in my hard science courses, it wasn't uncommon to turn in 20-30 pages every couple weeks.
Just as a clarification: Why do they ask for a minimum word count (or space count for that matter) and not for a minimum quality of the content. If students can accomplish the same with less words, then so be it.
I once had a professor who assigned regular essays with a maximum length of one properly formatted page. He was quite demanding, and I think I probably learned more about writing from those than most other multi-page assignments. He was also probably the most brilliant professor I'd had.
In this case, the rule is just not to use the word "very." I can't think of a single context where "very" doesn't degrade from the semantics and syntax of a sentence. I think this rule is appropriate to any and every style.
That's a much more coherent claim, if subjective. I agree with the weak claim ("it is usually best to drop the very and possibly replace the word it modified"). I disagree with the strong claim ("it is always best ...").
Oh, please, then you should broaden your thought process. Sure, "very" is overused/misused. But there are all sorts of places where it is the perfect word, especially when playing like you are talking to a child:
"And when she was bad, she was very, very bad."
Let's all agree that using "malicious" or "malevolent" would "degrade the semantics and syntax" of the sentence.
The number of absolute statements you can make about the English language is very close to the null set.
"Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before me in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver,—So, wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of a dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the north with the darkness towards the south—wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price, and don't be too particular."
Or perhaps more appropriately:
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!"
"Very" is a fine word. There's nothing about it that inherently "degrades semantics and syntax." In fact, I think that's probably a meaningless statement. How could it possibly degrade syntax?
It can also be used quite stylishly. Most words can.
Might be interesting to automatically keep a running count of words used in your writing (across formats), and make a habit of avoiding what you've been overusing.
Or it might be useful to do te exact opposite: analyze your writing to determine where you are using obscure words when there are common words which mean the exact same thing.
There's some use to most restrictions you can put on writing, simply to break old habits and grow. Not every change is an improvement, but every improvement is a change. I meant it more as an exercise than a rule (which is why I said "might be interesting...").
When I first moved to America, my speech was interpreted as not enthusiastic. A trick I use to now is to just put very in front of everything. I'm very happy that this fixed the problem.
I remember learning about this in my creative writing classes in college, and the other great tip we got at about the same time was to do something similar when writing in past tense by ditching the "ings" and changing references like "he was running home" with "he ran home" or "she was burning the papers" with "she burned the papers". It turns out that too many "ings" can make a story drag.
There's a difference in meaning between "he ran home" and "he was running home." Most people aren't aware enough of the language they use to avoid overusing certain things, but mechanical transformations aren't the answer. One should aspire to learn how language works, and then use it appropriately.
Yeah, bad example. I was referring more to removing "was" and "ing" if you are overusing it too much, particularly when writing scenes that include action.
It really does work though. Through peer review, I found that making some changes along these lines vastly improved some of my stories.
That was a very good article. I've wanted to read something like that for a very long time, but it's very difficult to find such material of very hiqh quality.
I was always bothered by the overuse of the word "pretty" on the Internet in place of "very." As a non-native English speaker, I grew up thinking of pretty as synonym of beautiful. Now that I see everyone using it as they would use very, I find it hard to parse.
It's not used in place of "very", it means "somewhat" or "mostly". "Pretty good" means not all good but not all bad either. If a server at a restaurant asks you, "How is your meal?" and you respond, "Pretty good", you should be prepared to have them ask, "What's wrong with it?"
I think this varies a lot depending on which english speaking communities you are in and your tone of voice.
Personally I often say something was pretty good and mean it as quite high praise or at least better than I expected. I think (hope) my tone of voice would make that apparent though.
Same here. I grew up in New England, where I think this usage is pretty common. People delight in giving me grief "you are only 'pretty happy'? Shouldn't you be happy...."
>"This curry is pretty hot" would mean it is hot, and hotter than normal, but not very hot in the context of curries. //
Probably what they mean, if they're British - and especially if male, is that the curry is so frigging hot it's bordering on inedible and likely giving them chemical burns but they're going to eat it anyway either to show "good manners" or prove they're well hard.
"Wicked" was extremely common in Vermont where I grew up, and I expect it still is. I sometimes find myself using it in everyday speech and it never seems to raise an eyebrow even out west here. "Friggin" is another word that I think is mostly a New England thing.
Where I am "friggin" has the context of a junior high kid who thinks it's a bad swear word, but doesn't quite have the nerve to say "fuck". So you don't generally hear it from people out of their teens.
"pretty" as an adverb to mean "to a moderately high degree" is pretty standard for English speakers. "It's pretty hot" means it's more than warm, but not hot".
Interestingly, the forms that you liken to "beautiful" actually parse to a native English speaker as "attractive but not quite beautiful".
So, on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the top), "pretty" has the connotation of maybe a 7 or 8 on any scale, beauty or otherwise. And that's basically how it always parses out in English. Just consider it as a 7-8 whatever on a 1-10 scale.
note if the scale is inverse, it's the same. Suppose 1-10 was a scale of ugliness (with 10 being most ugly) "pretty ugly" is still a 7-8 on that scale. Same with "pretty cold" if the 10 means "coldest possible".
"very" is used to emphasize something. "She's very pretty." Means she's somewhere between pretty and outright beautiful, but more on the beautiful side ("she's almost beautiful" has a bad connotation that there's something wrong with her).
"It's very hot" would mean not only is it hot, but it's a little extra hot.
It's like adding a .5 to anything on that 10 point scale.
So if "hot" is 10, very hot is a 10.5.
You rarely use it with words that have a moderate intention, except for specific effect, "it's very lukewarm" is not something you'd probably regularly hear. But "it's very cold" is.
I am a native English speaker who uses pretty that way often, and it still bothers me. When I was younger I always wrote pritty, and treated it as a separate word all together. I stopped because too many people thought I just couldn't spell.
I think this is a bad thing for a different reason; people are using "pretty" to adjust expectation downward. saying "pretty fun" is less suggestive than just "fun". It's become a qualifier used for widespread ass-guarding in social situations.
Isn't this ass-backwards? It seems to me that if exhausted really does just mean the same as "very tired", etc, we should be dumping all these other more intense adjectives. If your purpose in writing is to communicate, then needlessly complicating your speech with uncommon words is a bug, not a feature.
Agreed. Sometimes you use "very" because the sentence flows better that way. "Very" is a lyrical word and pairs well; many of the replacements (i.e., "exhausted", "sagacious", etc.) aren't. If the text is meant to be spoken aloud, it makes a substantial difference.
The reason this is recommended is in order to improve the specificity of description: "he was very tired" does not tell us as much about him. If you just substituted "very tired" with "exhausted" everywhere, you wouldn't be adhering to the spirit of the substitution, which is all about adding detail. Maybe his manager hates him and he is leaving work, "browbeaten and resigned", or maybe he just didn't sleep last night and he is headed to work, "clouds in his mind and lead in his limbs" or whatever.
And then next week we will get an article on how not to alienate your readers with pointless, highfalutin language like "sagacious" and "jubilant."
It's a huge blind spot for writers to believe that repetition has a cost, but large vocabularies don't. This is ingrained in them by English teachers, because avoiding repetition and using lots of fancy words is hard work, and thus that is what teachers value.
For most readers, though, the opposite is closer to the truth: They will ignore repetition (or might even interpret it as useful structure) until the point where it becomes ridiculous, but they quickly get stuck on odd words or language usage that requires them to work to read a piece.
A small minority of prescriptive linguists: "People are saying FOO a lot. We don't like them saying FOO. Let's tell them not to say FOO and try to teach them alternatives."
155 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 203 ms ] threadAs a side note, I was always amused by the number of generic superlatives available in many languages. In English, we've already got "very", and "damn" as the site mentions, along with "really", "extremely", "amazingly" and so on. In British English, you can say "bloody" or "damnedly" or "shockingly" or "terribly" or any of a vast number of other superlatives, not to ignore the crass "fucking".
My favourite has to be the French "vachement", which could be translated as "cowly".
It comes from "vache", which is the French noun for "cow", but can also be used familiarly as an adjective that roughly translates to "nasty".
If you enjoyed "vachement", you will be happy to know that the French noun "bœuf" (the second letter is made of an O and an E), which became "beef" in English, can also be used familiarly as an adjective meaning something along "intense".
"He's quite the meat head."
"He's an old salt."
"Her personality was rather spicy."
"He's a chicken."
"Don't be a fruit."
"Talking to her is like talking to a vegetable."
"She's such a potato."
"He's pretty corny around executives."
"That guy is a rotten egg."
"Her mind is like a pretzel."
"She was such a cute pumpkin."
"He's such a pig."
"He's nuts."
"What a cow."
(although that's from old French, like a lot of English food words)
I see what you did there, isn't 'also' an adverb?
edit: sniped by igravious
Edit: It looks like the tool already marks "very" for omission.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7223969
Although the technical mind I think is bugged more about precision rather than flow or poeticness of speech Ι think we can appreciate it...
Offhand you could say "I'm not overly tired" or "I'm not too tired", but those could subtly change the meaning of what you're trying to say or sound unnatural in everyday speech.
Tired, exhausted, washed up, worn out, fatigued, beat, weary, run down, depleted...
There seem to be many words which are useful in conversation but for whatever reason are not that good for efficient writing, or so overused in speech (for lack of better words as one scrambles for word choice in real time) that it's hard to avoid using them in writing.
And it may seem that this is a mistake that is difficult to make but because of the difference between writing and reading, where one may spend many minutes or even hours writing something that only takes a few seconds to read, it's easy to forget that you've repeated a word too often.
Apologizes for using footballer speak :-)
http://www.economist.com/style-guide/unnecessary-words
My father (an ex-English teacher) used to always say something like "concision is rarely wrong, unless it ruins precision."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinction
"And when she was bad, she was very, very bad."
Let's all agree that using "malicious" or "malevolent" would "degrade the semantics and syntax" of the sentence.
The number of absolute statements you can make about the English language is very close to the null set.
Or perhaps more appropriately:
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!"
It can also be used quite stylishly. Most words can.
I remember learning about this in my creative writing classes in college, and the other great tip we got at about the same time was to do something similar when writing in past tense by ditching the "ings" and changing references like "he was running home" with "he ran home" or "she was burning the papers" with "she burned the papers". It turns out that too many "ings" can make a story drag.
It really does work though. Through peer review, I found that making some changes along these lines vastly improved some of my stories.
To whoever posted this, thank you very much.
http://paste.ubuntu.com/6949984/
Personally I often say something was pretty good and mean it as quite high praise or at least better than I expected. I think (hope) my tone of voice would make that apparent though.
Tone of voice and situation sometimes counts though.
In order:
fairly > pretty > [the word] > very
"This curry is pretty hot" would mean it is hot, and hotter than normal, but not very hot in the context of curries.
So there's something in there about the context and that it is a modifier for "more" but not "much more".
>"This curry is pretty hot" would mean it is hot, and hotter than normal, but not very hot in the context of curries. //
Probably what they mean, if they're British - and especially if male, is that the curry is so frigging hot it's bordering on inedible and likely giving them chemical burns but they're going to eat it anyway either to show "good manners" or prove they're well hard.
Interestingly, the forms that you liken to "beautiful" actually parse to a native English speaker as "attractive but not quite beautiful".
So, on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the top), "pretty" has the connotation of maybe a 7 or 8 on any scale, beauty or otherwise. And that's basically how it always parses out in English. Just consider it as a 7-8 whatever on a 1-10 scale.
note if the scale is inverse, it's the same. Suppose 1-10 was a scale of ugliness (with 10 being most ugly) "pretty ugly" is still a 7-8 on that scale. Same with "pretty cold" if the 10 means "coldest possible".
"very" is used to emphasize something. "She's very pretty." Means she's somewhere between pretty and outright beautiful, but more on the beautiful side ("she's almost beautiful" has a bad connotation that there's something wrong with her).
"It's very hot" would mean not only is it hot, but it's a little extra hot.
It's like adding a .5 to anything on that 10 point scale.
So if "hot" is 10, very hot is a 10.5.
You rarely use it with words that have a moderate intention, except for specific effect, "it's very lukewarm" is not something you'd probably regularly hear. But "it's very cold" is.
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/08/29/substitute-damn/
He never said that the coldest winter he spent was a summer in San Francisco either. Damn.
Wat.
It's a huge blind spot for writers to believe that repetition has a cost, but large vocabularies don't. This is ingrained in them by English teachers, because avoiding repetition and using lots of fancy words is hard work, and thus that is what teachers value.
For most readers, though, the opposite is closer to the truth: They will ignore repetition (or might even interpret it as useful structure) until the point where it becomes ridiculous, but they quickly get stuck on odd words or language usage that requires them to work to read a piece.
Everybody else: "FOO"
And the world keeps on turning.