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All good tips, and not just for lawyers. They're all things I try to do. Calling them "zinger verbs" is really underselling. The general principle is to use wo

All good tips, and not just for lawyers. They're all things I try to do. Calling them "zinger verbs" is really underselling. The general principle is to use words with impact, be they nouns, adjectives, adverbs, or whatever. In the example, "feed" and "sap" and "vault over" are just much more exciting and evocative than "sustain" and "undermine," which are something a bureaucrat would write. "Shuffling along" gives you a mental picture of some old person moving slowly. I do find The Economist tedious and boring, but that's a problem of its outlook, which aims to never say anything that contradicts conventional wisdom.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
One "trick" that I can't stand, but is beloved by news editors (usually at the low end) is to avoid repeating the main noun and to do anything, no matter how awkward, to find another word: > A water shortage is has been announced. H2O use will be restricted... > A car factory burned down. The vehicle plant... It's jarring to repeat a word to often "by mistake" in close proximity [1]. It's not jarring if that's the subject at hand: it's actually more jarring to stretch for a synonym and make the reader follow that you're still taking about the same exact thing! [1]: Sometimes even the same unusual word repeated within the same book can stand out for the repetition more than for the word itself.
- Veen 4y ago
  The Fowlers called this habit elegant variation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elegant_variation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elegant_variation
  - xdavidliu 4y ago
    oh so THAT's what that's called! This practice is fine for literature and other forms of art, but I often find people using it in code and comments and like, which find totally counterproductive and unnecessary.
- ch215 4y ago
  This is known in the craft as monologophobia. Theodore Bernstein, a NYT journalist, who coined the phrase, described a monologophobe as someone 'who would rather walk naked in front of Saks Fifth Avenue than be caught using the same word more than once in three lines of type'. The most common example is journalists' aversion to repeating words like 'said' or 'told'. People don't _say_ things any more, they: continue, explain, add, verbalise, enunciate, vocalise, and so on.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Which can be subtly changing the meaning - explain carries more baggage than said, as do some of the others.
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    I think I suffer that...I've edited a few HN comments recently after realising I'd used the same word twice in a sentence. Even the previous sentence's overuse of the first person pronoun is bothering me...
    - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
      I think it's drummed into people at school not to overuse the same word. However, this is, as usual for school, an oversimplification. Repetition is to be avoided when it is that repetition itself that stands out unattractively. In the previous sentence, "repetition" is repeated deliberately in order to emphasise that the referred-to noun remains the same[1]. If your grammatical gymnastics to avoid a repetition become more annoying than the repetition itself, just leave it. (Again, I could have found a circumlocution here for "repetition", but would it make things better? Would it have the same nuances? Would it rather distract from the actual meaning of the whole sentence?) Off-topic (and I do hope not too personal; I don't mean to be a grammar bore when we're not here for the grammar): overuse of ellipses is far more aggravating, to me, when parsing a comment than an unintentional reuse of a common word like "I". It stands out most because I have a colleague who does it all the time and it drives me up the wall as I can't tell if there's a implicit conclusion that I should be intuiting(...) If I have to pick something I overuse, it would be parentheticals (like this). [1]: If short on space, you could distil "... when it is that repetition itself that stands out ..." to just "... when it stands out ...", but what "it" represents is now implicit, the whole is more neutral and the emphasis is lost.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  Good comments. Non-repetition is a style rule that can be broken sometimes and have even more impact. Speaking of repetition: patent claims have very strict rules about this; "A packet, comprised of a TCP header and data" -- first use "The packet" -- all subsequent uses Everyone who reads claims, when they see "the packet" look to previous claims to find the antecedent basis of "packet." It's always assumed that you introduced the packet earlier. Obviously you must not use a synonym for it.
- jaclaz 4y ago
  JFYI, William Saffire on the matter (fumblerules): If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. https://dmorgan.web.wesleyan.edu/materials/safire.htm https://dmorgan.web.wesleyan.edu/materials/safire.htm

adhesive_wombat 4y ago

One "trick" that I can't stand, but is beloved by news editors (usually at the low end) is to avoid repeating the main noun and to do anything, no matter how awkward, to find another word: > A water shortage is has been announced. H2O use will be restricted... > A car factory burned down. The vehicle plant... It's jarring to repeat a word to often "by mistake" in close proximity [1]. It's not jarring if that's the subject at hand: it's actually more jarring to stretch for a synonym and make the reader follow that you're still taking about the same exact thing! [1]: Sometimes even the same unusual word repeated within the same book can stand out for the repetition more than for the word itself.

Veen 4y ago
The Fowlers called this habit elegant variation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elegant_variation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elegant_variation
- xdavidliu 4y ago
  oh so THAT's what that's called! This practice is fine for literature and other forms of art, but I often find people using it in code and comments and like, which find totally counterproductive and unnecessary.
ch215 4y ago
This is known in the craft as monologophobia. Theodore Bernstein, a NYT journalist, who coined the phrase, described a monologophobe as someone 'who would rather walk naked in front of Saks Fifth Avenue than be caught using the same word more than once in three lines of type'. The most common example is journalists' aversion to repeating words like 'said' or 'told'. People don't _say_ things any more, they: continue, explain, add, verbalise, enunciate, vocalise, and so on.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Which can be subtly changing the meaning - explain carries more baggage than said, as do some of the others.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  I think I suffer that...I've edited a few HN comments recently after realising I'd used the same word twice in a sentence. Even the previous sentence's overuse of the first person pronoun is bothering me...
  - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    I think it's drummed into people at school not to overuse the same word. However, this is, as usual for school, an oversimplification. Repetition is to be avoided when it is that repetition itself that stands out unattractively. In the previous sentence, "repetition" is repeated deliberately in order to emphasise that the referred-to noun remains the same[1]. If your grammatical gymnastics to avoid a repetition become more annoying than the repetition itself, just leave it. (Again, I could have found a circumlocution here for "repetition", but would it make things better? Would it have the same nuances? Would it rather distract from the actual meaning of the whole sentence?) Off-topic (and I do hope not too personal; I don't mean to be a grammar bore when we're not here for the grammar): overuse of ellipses is far more aggravating, to me, when parsing a comment than an unintentional reuse of a common word like "I". It stands out most because I have a colleague who does it all the time and it drives me up the wall as I can't tell if there's a implicit conclusion that I should be intuiting(...) If I have to pick something I overuse, it would be parentheticals (like this). [1]: If short on space, you could distil "... when it is that repetition itself that stands out ..." to just "... when it stands out ...", but what "it" represents is now implicit, the whole is more neutral and the emphasis is lost.
AlbertCory 4y ago
Good comments. Non-repetition is a style rule that can be broken sometimes and have even more impact. Speaking of repetition: patent claims have very strict rules about this; "A packet, comprised of a TCP header and data" -- first use "The packet" -- all subsequent uses Everyone who reads claims, when they see "the packet" look to previous claims to find the antecedent basis of "packet." It's always assumed that you introduced the packet earlier. Obviously you must not use a synonym for it.
jaclaz 4y ago
JFYI, William Saffire on the matter (fumblerules): If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. https://dmorgan.web.wesleyan.edu/materials/safire.htm https://dmorgan.web.wesleyan.edu/materials/safire.htm