Comments on: It bears repeating…

By: Jessica

Jessica — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 20:15:33 +0000

I raise your “More than a little” with my dependence on “a bit.” I’m a “just” er, too. Uncomfortable as it is to take a hard look at the words we reach for all too often (for me it’s like listening to my voice in a recording; in my head my voice is several octaves lower. Think a rich baritone) it’s a helpful exercise, and helps us to break lexical bad habits.

By: Kristin Laughtin

Kristin Laughtin — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:31:28 +0000

Haha, I wrote a blog post yesterday about how I made myself conquer some bad writing habits, but there are still certain turns of phrase I abuse. I utilize lot of “just”s and “even”s and “at (the very) least”s and “let alone”s in any writing. In academic papers, when repeating a point one of my sources has made, I rotate between “X points out”, “X describes”, “X notes”, and so on, using the same few introductory tags. In appropriate settings, I’ve found myself using “A challenging issue is” to start a sentence in more places than should be normal. In both academic and casual writing, I start a lot of sentences with “However”. In more casual settings, I tend to overuse “awesome” and, to a lesser extent, “amazing” as adjectives.

When I noticed these habits, I began using CTRL+F to find them in my manuscripts. That made it easy to get a sense of just how much I was abusing these phrases and to correct them.

By: Dara

Dara — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:28:33 +0000

I use “Well,” a lot. Also, I’ve found that when I’m describing something that’s particularly heinous–or even just slightly so–I use “foul”. Too much. 😛

By: Josin

Josin — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 06:36:32 +0000

“More than a little…”

That’s my kryptonite. He was more than a little annoyed with her reaction. She was more than a little angry after the party. I was more than a little irritated by the whole thing.

Blech.

By: Donna Hole

Donna Hole — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 03:28:25 +0000

although; even though; though; so; really. Awesome.

The word/phrase counter would die with overload if I used it on my projects

……..dhole

By: Laura

Laura — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 00:35:55 +0000

I wrote a whole blog post about my love affair with "just" and "as if." I definitely do use the find feature to sniff out any overused words and phrases. I think all writes have them.

By: Amy

Amy — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:39:19 +0000

I’m a “just”er. It’s purely a writing tic. I didn’t even notice it until I started blogging, but it’s JUST so hard to avoid when I’m reviewing books. Now I can’t stop seeing it.

By: JGStewart

JGStewart — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:30:26 +0000

Way back in 2008 I loaded the 3rd draft of my novel in wordle, which generates a word cloud based on frequency of use:

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/277883/Smokehouse_Blues_3rd_Draft

Pretty neat, but in the end I didn’t find it all that helpful… most of the words are far too common for me to worry about over-using them. I think repetition of less-common words/turns of phrase tends to become distracting quicker, and long before those words will make a blip in any kind word counter.

(E.g. an author I like quite a bit used the word ‘smear’ in a non-standard way in one of his books… probably only did it 5 or 6 times, but it drove me up the wall.)

I ended up going through my entire ‘final’ draft and highlighting the bits I thought might be distracting, and then tried to space them out or replace them. It was not the most enjoyable part of my novel-writing experience…

~jgs

By: Lance Parkin

Lance Parkin — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:06:47 +0000

In one David Lodge novel, an academic has written a paper noting an author’s “overuse of the word ‘the'”, and the author read that paper and has become completely neurotic and unable to complete any writing project since.