It'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.
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.
No matter your intended audience, there is always somebody who will need a dictionary. It's not shameful to look up words, and it's easier than ever to do so. You've shifted to arguing about conversion rates for non-English speakers, which is a fair, but separate point. (I'm also curious if small words and simple sentences really do translate to higher conversion rates.) I am talking about prose in general.
> PS Morose is not "very sad" :-)
Nor is awestruck "very amazed." The smaller your vocabulary is, the less you can communicate (as redblacktree pointed out, this is demonstrated quite dramatically by George Orwell's 1984, wherein the language is dumbed down so much and has so many words removed that the citizenry can't express emotions the state deems negative.)
This is the truly tragic thing about this incessant anti-intellectualism: people lose some measure of ability to express what they really mean or feel, all in the name of meeting the lowest common denominator.
(For the record, I am not a native speaker, and I love seeing words that I don't understand.)
There's a difference between "somebody" needing a dictionary, and "20% of your audience".
If you write a book, go ahead and insert "fluffy" words, if they are more precise.
If you write a blog post or create site copy, assume the worst and keep it simple.
(PS Neither am I, and so do I, but I admire writers like Steinbeck and Hemingway. Simple and powerful. It's actually harder, not easier.)
The problem is that you perceive them as 'fluffy' words. When you're used to them, they increase precision in communication.
I agree that you should write to your audience, but at the same time, don't aim for the lowest common denominator. That's a race to the bottom. Site copy for a commercial site should be pitched at your customer's level. A personal blog post should be written the way you want to write - it's your voice. It's okay to expect your audience to be of a given quality, or for them to stretch themselves a little to understand you fluently. The other thing is that the more detailed your language, the better you can write between the lines. Not every concept needs to be explained directly when writing.
Keep in mind also that the article is talking about creative writing, something people read to enjoy. Striking out tired common terms like 'very' makes your writing more unique and interesting. The article isn't about how to do copywriting, though you still wouldn't want to use 'very' all that much there, either - repetitive phrases make for bad copy.
Only an idiot would think she was suggesting blindly replacing every instance of "very capable" with accomplished. Clearly they are merely suggestions to consider.
The article describes ways to avoid using very, not that you should replace every instance of very with another synonym. There are instances when you can easily replace "very XXX" with a more descriptive term.
"If a dictionary visit is required, you've failed the audience."
I disagree, I very much enjoy having my vocabulary enriched by having to visit a dictionary now and again. If you are an english speaker and reader (regardless of whether it's your first, second or third language) visits to the dictionary are a good thing.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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 ...").
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.
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.
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...").
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.
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.
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".
The 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.
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.
"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.
>"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.
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.
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...."
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
That 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.
If 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.
I guess I mostly prefer to emphasize the object when the actor isn't necessary. I've known the deal with the passive voice. It's better used when it makes the sentence shorter rather than longer.
If you believe that, why did you use forms of "to be" just now? "when Im was in high school", "this is overly restrictive", "there was a better way", pretty much the only part of your post which would find favor with your English teacher was "it sucked".
I 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.
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.
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."
I 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.
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.
Avoiding 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.
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.
I 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.
"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.
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.
I 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.
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.
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