very cold != freezing
be careful not to overuse hyperboles.
Ways to avoid using the word 'very'
61–70 of 156 posts
Re: Ways to avoid using the word 'very'
#62This 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…
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.
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.
Re: Ways to avoid using the word 'very'
#63This 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…
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.
The Economist Style Guide disagrees:
Re: Ways to avoid using the word 'very'
#64This 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…
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.
But what about "thusly"? I'm pretty sure that should never be used.
Re: Ways to avoid using the word 'very'
#65This 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…
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.
Re: Ways to avoid using the word 'very'
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where I grew up we used "wicked" as an intensifier, as in "he is wicked nice." Sound any better?
No, but im guessing you grew up in or near Boston?
My first thought as well, but my knowledge of Boston doesn't extend much farther than Good Will Hunting, so...
Re: Ways to avoid using the word 'very'
#67OCR'd it since I'm going to add it to my dotfiles. Might help somebody: http://paste.ubuntu.com/6949984/
add it to your dotfiles, and use it how exactly?
Re: Ways to avoid using the word 'very'
#68I have been using Hemingway App on my medium essays since last week and every time I removed the word "very", the sentence became better.
Re: Ways to avoid using the word 'very'
#69[deleted]
Re: Ways to avoid using the word 'very'
#70This 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…
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.
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.