Thirty-seven Words or Phrases You Should Eliminate from Your Writing
The best writers know how to write clear, concise sentences and how to trim long sentences to more readable lengths. They also know how to express themselves with long and short sentences that are free of unnecessary words and redundancies.
This post includes thirty-seven words or phrases you should eliminate from your writing to make it more concise and readable. A good editor will likely trim them for you, because they’re unnecessary and/or overused, but you’ll look like more of a pro if you do it yourself. Eventually, you may discover that you have less need to remove them because they aren’t appearing as often in your text, even in that messy first draft.
Up/down
In many cases, these words aren’t needed, so try your sentences without them. “The toddler fell down to the ground” works better as “The toddler fell to the ground.” And “He stood up and walked to the podium” should be “He stood and walked to the podium.”
Just
This is one of the hardest words for me to eliminate, but I’ve come to believe it “just” isn’t necessary. See? It’s better as, “ . . . I’ve come to believe it isn’t necessary.”
Literally, completely, totally
These three don’t add a thing to your sentence. If you write, “She was totally exhausted,” it’s the same as writing “She was exhausted.” The word ‘exhausted’ tells us what we need to know.
That
This is a hard one for me. But if a sentence makes sense without the word “that,” then remove it. For example, the headline on this post: “Thirteen Words That You Should Eliminate From Your Writing” is better written as, “Thirteen Words You Should Eliminate From Your Writing.”
Then
This word is an unnecessary storytelling word. “Then she raced to the neighbor’s house to call for help” works better as “She raced to the neighbor’s house to call for help.”
Began/start
“I started to clean the house” is stronger as “I cleaned the house.”
Quite/Rather
The class isn’t “quite boring”—it’s simply “The class is boring.” And he shouldn’t be described as “rather incompetent”—instead, “He’s incompetent.”
The
You’re surprised by this one, right? But it’s true—in some cases, it’s not needed. “The wind knocked out the power all over town” reads better as “Wind knocked out power all over town.”
Some Redundant Phrases
Armed gunman
Protest against
Final outcome
Added bonus
End result
12 noon
Plan ahead
Past history
Completely destroyed
Null and void
Each and every
Close scrutiny
Basic fundamentals
Assemble together
Ask a question
Unexpected surprise
Unintended mistake
Same identical
Exact same
Revert back
Written down
Meaningless Phrases
at the end of the day
It is of utmost importance.
at this point in time
Filter Words
You should eliminate as many filter words as possible, but that’s for another post here.
Do you have any suggestions for words/phrases that should be added to this post? Include them in the comments and I’ll add them to the post in thirty days along with credits at the bottom to all the contributors.