Avoiding These Words Can Help You Become a Better Writer
Limit their use or cut them out entirely
As an editor for Better Programming, there are a few words that I seem to be constantly deleting.
These words either have better alternatives, or they don’t add any extra meaning to a sentence, or they’re confusing or clumsy. I’m not saying any of them should never be used (well, perhaps one) but they’re used too often in ways that make me, as an editor, sad.
Very
I estimate that I delete nine out of ten incidences of the word “very.” There are three main reasons:
1. There’s already a word for that
Very big: There are countless words that mean very big. Try “enormous,” “vast,” “huge,” “massive,” “gigantic,” or even “humongous.” If none of those sound quite right, are you sure plain old “big” isn’t what you’re looking for?
Very small: Likewise, “very small” might be replaced with “tiny,” “brief,” “short,” “minuscule,” or even “diminutive,” depending on context.
Very important: If it’s so important that it’s decisive to the outcome of the thing you’re discussing then you should use “crucial” because that’s exactly what crucial means. And if it’s not that important do you really need to say “very important”? Important is still important.
2. It doesn’t add intensity
“Very” is known as an intensifier because it intensifies the adjective it precedes. It gives the adjective something extra.
For example, we would expect a “very useful application” to be slightly more useful than a merely “useful application” — if they were both described by the same person, in the same piece of writing.
But what if one writer calls an application “very useful” and another writer in a different piece of writing calls a different application merely “useful”? Do we learn anything from this? Can we deduce that one application is more useful than the other? I think it’s pretty obvious that the answer is no.
My point is that the word “very” is not quantifiable. “Very” has no fixed value, which means it’s only useful as a comparator — as a way of establishing that two things are, for example, important but one of them is more important than the other.
In other words, if you always use the word “very” it doesn’t intensify anything and you might as well leave it out entirely.
3. It doesn’t make sense
Some words you just can’t use “very” with. Anything that’s black and white, or binary in nature, can’t be “very.” Take a light switch: a light switch is either on or off, it could never be “very on” (even a dimmer switch).
Other examples of binary words are less obvious. For example, what is wrong with “very crucial”? “Crucial” denotes something critical to an outcome. This is a black-and-white statement — “crucial,” like “critical,” does not allow for any gradations or shades. If a thing is crucial, it’s just crucial, it can’t be “a bit crucial”, “partly crucial” or “very crucial.”
Personally
People often use “personally” when there’s no need.
“Personally, I prefer to use Angular” just means “I prefer to use Angular.” If that’s all you want to say, don’t use “personally.”
On the other hand, if you wrote “The vast majority of my friends swear by React, but personally, I prefer to use Angular,” that would be a much better usage of the word. In that case, “personally” is being used to emphasize the difference between the writer and their friends. But try the sentence without it: “The vast majority of my friends swear by React, I prefer to use Angular.” That says just as much in fewer words, which is always a good thing.
Thus
Verily I say to thee, “thus” sounds kind of weird here.
Okay, I know that “thus” is still widely used in formal and academic writing and it is perfectly grammatically acceptable and not, in fact, archaic. But it still sounds archaic and a bit stuffy and formal for Better Programming and Medium, in my opinion.
In most cases “thus” can be replaced with “so” and the sentence becomes more approachable and less formal.
Perhaps you disagree and that’s fine. As an editor, I won’t always change “thus” if it’s been used correctly (Note: I will immediately delete “thusly” because that is a ridiculous word).
Utilize
I’ve already mentioned my dislike of “utilize” in my piece Writing Tips for Programmers. “Utilize” is a piece of pseudo-technical, pseudo-lingo that usually means nothing more and nothing less than “use.” “Use’ is a perfectly good word — shorter, easier to write, and easier to say than utilize.
In the words of Eric Partridge in the classic style guide Usage and Abusage:
utilize is, 99 times out of 100, much inferior to use; the other one time it is merely inferior.
When looking for sources to back up my visceral dislike for this word, I did find one, more contemporary, opinion that gave it a tiny but credible pass in certain limited circumstances. In the words of Grammar Girl:
The word “utilize” often appears “in contexts in which a strategy is put to practical advantage or a chemical or nutrient is being taken up and used effectively”. For example, according to the American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style, you might hear “utilize” properly used in a sentence such as “If a diet contains too much phosphorus, calcium is not utilized efficiently”.
Does this mean there could be specific, technical reasons why the word “utilize” should sometimes be used in the world of programming? I hope not but I’m not a programmer — only you can tell me. Please leave a comment if that’s the case.
Update: After several more years editing programmers I’ve decided that there is no utility in my vetoing of “utilize” — that ship has sailed. Programmers utilize frameworks, programs utilize hardware resources, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
Final Words
No words should ever be banned, just as no books should ever be banned. But perhaps we could apply some light-touch self-regulation to some.
