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Ways to avoid using the word 'very'
- gweinberg 13y agoIsn'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.
- gamblor956 13y agoAgreed. 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.
- delluminatus 13y agoThe 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.
- grecy 13y agoI prefer 'double plus tired'.
- jimmaswell 13y agoReminds me of how I thought those forms in that book weren't really such a bad idea but were presented in such a negative way.
- qbrass 13y agoImagine the comments section of every website filtered to Newspeak.
- chc 13y agoAnd 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.
- jeremysmyth 13y agoBut what if I want to say "very terrified"? 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".
- ozh 13y agosuch translation! cowly awesome!
- cgriswald 13y agoIndeed. I enjoyed it ever so much.
- tptacek 13y agoTerrified isn't a gradable adjective (it appears to be a textbook example, in fact).
- glomph 13y agoSome of the best writing of course breaks rules on gradable adjectives though.
- Reebz 13y agoYou'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".
- nmc 13y agoKeep 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".
- vezzy-fnord 13y agoQuite useful, I'll say.
- tptacek 13y agoConsider not using the word "sagacious", though.
- roflc0ptic 13y agohe said, sagaciously.
- mcv 13y agoIs "very, very" okay? Or "really really"? I use that a lot.
- TheSOB888 13y agoNope, anything you use a lot loses its punch. (That's the idea behind the article)
- cliveowen 13y agoThis 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.
- tptacek 13y agoYeah, 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.
- Zikes 13y agoSounds like something that could be integrated into that Hemingway [1] tool that was posted here a few days ago. Edit: It looks like the tool already marks "very" for omission. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7223969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7223969
- Zikes 13y ago'Very' isn't necessarily a bad modifier, it just shouldn't be used very often.
- wavefunction 13y agoOr... It shouldn't be used as often as it is...
- bagosm 13y agoTee hee you used it! Really though, I think there is a big difference between "Very tired" and "exhausted". Although the technical mind I think is bugged more about precision rather than flow or poeticness of speech Ι think we can appreciate it...
- Zikes 13y agoEspecially 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.
- sliverstorm 13y agoBoth 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. Tired, exhausted, washed up, worn out, fatigued, beat, weary, run down, depleted...
- Maciek416 13y agoThis 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.
- InclinedPlane 13y agoSee 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.
- yoha 13y agoI'd go further: run a analysis of word frequencies and identify the meaningless ones amongst the most frequent.
- InclinedPlane 13y agoIndeed. 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.
- Zikes 13y agoAlso, "of course" and "obviously".
- 13y ago
- farginay 13y agoVery good article.
- nikbackm 13y agoIt was brilliant indeed.
- felipellrocha 13y agoAgreed. Very useful, indeed.
- coenhyde 13y agoWhen 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.
- JetSpiegel 13y agoI thought that was, like, common knowledge. Everybody, like, speaks like that.
- caiob 13y agoWow. Such article, Very informative, Much useful, So cool.
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoSimple: find/replace 'very' for ''. The meaning is unchanged.
- dksidana 13y agovery rude = vulgar ?
- JadeNB 13y agoThe advice attributed to Kleinbaum is actually from the movie Dead Poets Society, written by Tom Schulman (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097165 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097165). Googling for "Kleinbaum + Dead Poets Society" suggests that it is a novelisation that came later: http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Poets-Society-N-Kleinbaum/dp/1401308775 http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Poets-Society-N-Kleinbaum/dp/1401....
- dpcan 13y agoThis is a good list and lesson. 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.
- sabbatic13 13y agoThere'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.
- dpcan 13y agoYeah, 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.
- trekky1700 13y agoWay #1: Don't right an article about not using the world 'very'
- coldtea 13y agoThat 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. To whoever posted this, thank you very much.
- susi22 13y agoOCR'd it since I'm going to add it to my dotfiles. Might help somebody: http://paste.ubuntu.com/6949984/ http://paste.ubuntu.com/6949984/
- oneeyedpigeon 13y agoI hadn't even realised that was an image. Text-as-images make me ver... furious!
- g3orge 13y agoadd it to your dotfiles, and use it how exactly?
- sker 13y agoI 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.
- adriand 13y agoIt'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?"
- glomph 13y agoI 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.
- RogerL 13y agoSame 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...."
- sabbatic13 13y agoHow do you handle "fairly"? It is similarly polyvalent.
- aestra 13y agoI take fairly to mean less than pretty. Oh somewhat like "ok." or the newer word "meh." Tone of voice and situation sometimes counts though. In order: fairly > pretty > [the word] > very
- 13y ago
- gruseom 13y agoThat "substitute 'damn'" quote is damn good, but the attribution to Twain is damn bogus: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/08/29/substitute-damn/ 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.
- sdegutis 13y agoThat's text. Very plain text. It even fits perfectly in a plain old HTML table. But it's an image? Wat.
- jameshart 13y agoShows up on facebook walls when article is shared. Gets more clicks. Also pinnable.
- oneeyedpigeon 13y agoA 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." Everybody else: "FOO" And the world keeps on turning.
- jotm 13y agoMost of those words can (and often are) still be emphasized by "very" :-). There's no escaping it
- snake_plissken 13y agoA hyena can be fierce. And lions can be ferocious. But honey badgers are always very ferocious.
- boobsbr 13y agovery cold != freezing be careful not to overuse hyperboles.
- aytekin 13y agoI have been using Hemingway App on my medium essays since last week and every time I removed the word "very", the sentence became better.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- the_af 13y agoI wonder what Orwell would think. As mentioned in an article on writing by Orwell, posted here some time ago, didn't he prefer simple constructions such as "very poor" to "destitute"? I wonder if he would think most of the recommendations are actually snobbish and more complex to understand. Not saying Orwell is right and the article wrong. Just that this kind of recommendations is very subjective (quick, someone find me a replacement for "very subjective"!). A matter of taste, actually, and not all accomplished writers agree on this.
- sdegutis 13y agoI can't agree with her article. These are legitimate words with their own distinct connotations. Saying "very old" conveys a different idea than saying "ancient". She's encouraging sensationalist writing where down-to-earth content would often be easier to understand and convey the author's meaning clearer and more accurately.
- ctdonath 13y agoI find such tips handy for writing. Don't use "very"; avoid starting a sentence with "I" [1]; don't end words with "ly"; avoid "to be"; etc. An excellent summary of such tips is Stephen King's On Writing. While the bulk of it is interesting (autobiography), the 16-page section "Toolbox" is a fantastic collection of writing guidance. Highly recommended, to the point that I look for opportunities to mention it. [1] - I know. Selective breaking of rules has its place too.
- jerf 13y ago"Avoiding starting with 'I'" sounds context-dependent. In a journal article, sure, that's bad form, but here on HN in a more conversational environment I don't see a problem.
- joesmo 13y ago“Rather, very, little, pretty -- these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words." -- William Strunk Jr. I find it hard to argue with Strunk on this and most other things related to writing.
- SeanDav 13y agoI find myself using the word "nice" too much sometimes!
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- samatman 13y agoThis is the very model of a modern formal reference The rule should be respected but not treated with due deference The use for truth or 'verity' is evident but venerable We very much avoid the use of very much in general.
- mhartl 13y agoWe very much avoid the use of very much in gene- general!
- gertef 13y agoThis is the very model of a modern formal reference The rule should be respected but with only its due deference The use for truth or 'verity' is evident and venerable We very much avoid the use of very much in general.
- bane 13y agoThe problem with style guides is that they're often conflated by both the reader and the writer as rulebooks. They should instead be used as sources of writing ideas, or communication improvement aids -- to target writing for specific audiences. English can be assembled in all kinds of wonderful and creative ways. The best writing is when you coin a phrase that style guides insist shouldn't work, but communicate something beautifully. "Most excellent", for example, is a wonderful example. It's concise, it's nonstandard and it's brings about vivid imagery of two time travelling wanna be rock stars. The worst style guides are outright wrong. "very afraid" doesn't mean "terrified". How lame does "be afraid, be very afraid" sounds as "be afraid, be terrified"? "very poor" doesn't mean "destitute", I grew up very poor, but we were never destitute. Being "very rude" is has a very different connotation from "vulgar". This guide takes finely graded connotations and turns them into extremes. It's worth using it to double check if what you mean is the extreme, and you accidentally used something else, but beyond that, a search and replace of "very <word>" with any of these suggestions is likely to make your writing worse. English can be beautiful, enjoy it.
- habosa 13y agoWhen I was in high school we couldn't use the verb "to be" in assignments for English class. No is, am, are, was, were, has been, will be, etc. Of course this is overly restrictive, but 80-90% of the time there was a better way to phrase the sentence if you thought about removing the "be" verb. 10% of the time it was awkward, which sucked. Aside: also taught me that MS Word has a very advanced find feature where I could give it "be" and it would find me all of the above conjugations.
- JoshTriplett 13y ago> When I was in high school we couldn't use the verb "to be" in assignments for English class. No is, am, are, was, were, has been, will be, etc. > Of course this is overly restrictive, but 80-90% of the time there was a better way to phrase the sentence if you thought about removing the "be" verb. 10% of the time it was awkward, which sucked. I do the same thing, habitually, as a tool to improve my writing, inspired by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime .
- jimmaswell 13y agoThat is just completely absurd. How would I even say that without using "is"? That .. is, no .. Complete absurdity is , no.. Complete absurdity dwells in that concept? That sounds like I'm trying to write some kind of poetry. The verb "to be" is one of the most important verbs of the entire language. Of any language, even in cases like Latin where it's not said but implied to be there. It is a fundamental tool of communication to equate the existential states of different concepts with the verb "to be". These writings must have sounded awful. No real writing ever avoids the use of "to be". Being is too important of a concept. Cogito ergo sum, as is said. Existential qualification is too important to throw away.
- RogerL 13y agoIf you intend to emphasize the object in that first sentence, the passive voice is correct (as in this sentence). However, we usually do not want to do that. Consider: The chair leg has been chewed by my bored dog. vs My bored dog chewed the chair leg. The former, being passive, emphasizes the chair leg rather than the subject. Anyway, a non-passive rewrite of your first sentence is: "I find that completely absurd". Note the active voice. I find it a truer representation of your thoughts. You are making a judgement on the concept, and this wording makes that clear.
- Houshalter 13y agoAvoiding words seems rather arbitrary. English has a lot of over-used words, for example the words "of", "a", "the", "with", etc, etc. It seems more likely to me that people just associate certain styles of writing with professional or amateur writers. Rather than the style of writing being objectively superior. For example use of slang or misspellings becomes highly associated with the education or intelligence of the writer. This creates a feedback loop where people trying to appear as high-status as possible imitate the writing style, look up standardized spellings, avoid "less-formal" words, etc. I'm not saying that this is true in this case, it's just something I notice.
- notlisted 13y agoLet me disagree. Many words in the "rather say" column hinder clear communication. * If a dictionary visit is required, you've failed the audience. * If multiple interpretations are possible, you've failed yourself. Ex: - Sagacious is out of favor since 1920 (google ngram). - Solemn vs 'very serious' (implies religious aspects where there were none) - Accomplished vs 'very capable (implies having attained something, not the potential to do so) - Unyielding vs 'very strong' (replacement rarely applies) etc etc Use of sagacious is not sagacious and a solemn problem indeed. This accomplished man, accomplished tiny. Behold, unyielding password encryption.
- sdegutis 13y agoTotally agreed. She's just encouraging fluff over substance.
- thirsteh 13y agoIt's a bad idea to encrypt passwords, but that's beside the point. > If a dictionary visit is required, you've failed the audience. If you take this to its logical conclusion, we end up in a world where English ceases to be the language of Shakespeare and more like dogespeak. No one will be morose anymore, just very sad, and no one will know what it means to be awestruck. Someone will always need a dictionary. That shouldn't make us afraid to show that we have a vocabulary spanning more than 500 words, or that we have an education at all. God forbid we encourage others to stop talking or writing like 16-year-olds on E! TV.
- redblacktree 13y agodouble plus ungood!
- notlisted 13y agoOoopsie. Deleted the word 'intended'. Write for your intended audience and not people like you/your friends (or english professor). In our international/global economy the audience often extends to non-native English speakers. Simple words on e-commerce sites generate more international sales. PS Morose is not "very sad" :-)
- j2kun 13y agoI would love to see a dataset of English word-pairs rated by their severity (i.e., how much "very" applies to modify the first to get the second on a scale from -1 to 1). For example, "quiet" would have "silent" rated as 1, "roomy" might have "spacious" listed close to 0, and "gorgeous" would have "pretty" as negative.
- hmsimha 13y agoWhat's the preferred replacement to 'very currency'?
- davidw 13y ago"Come on, it'll be very." -- Heathers
- buckbova 13y agoA useless word I see used often is "just" as in "you just do" or "i just need". For me, it implies triviality or adds nothing.
- gertef 13y agos/very/insanely/ Other acceptable alternatives: s/very/fantastically/ s/very/heart-breakingly/ s/very/awesomely/ s/very/literally/
- snogglethorpe 13y agoMy personal favorite: s/very/mind-bogglingly/
- xvolter 13y agoHave you ever read 1984. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak I'm of the opinion we should dispose of useless words. Why even have the word terrified in the dictionary when you can use very afraid? Very good and you'd use superb? Over the dozens of other words that can be used to replace good? I say get rid of them all. I'd also go with the idea of removing antonyms in exchange for un- prefixed words because you do have the issue that antonyms are not exact opposite. You also have the issue with the comparisons that very can be less intensive. Very wet does not mean soaked. Additionally, being anxious modernly implies a mixture of stress, worry, possibly fright. Potentially changing your meaning is not usually desired. However, this article only describes how to avoid using very, and that may be a good goal. There are many times when you can better describe your meaning without using very. However, you cannot do it in every instance.
- SkyMarshal 13y agoAvoid "exciting" and "passionate" as well, two other words so overused as to be meaningless.
- emmelaich 13y agoThe old 'diction' command distributed the Writers Workbench on Unix systems of yore had this warning (among many others). I used it a lot! http://www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/diction/diction.1.html I think its available in source but a quick web search didn't find such.