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.> 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.
PS Morose is not "very sad" :-)
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.
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.
Apologizes for using footballer speak :-)
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".
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 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.
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.
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.
So there's something in there about the context and that it is a modifier for "more" but not "much more".
>"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.
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.
Tone of voice and situation sometimes counts though.
In order:
fairly > pretty > [the word] > very
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.
> 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 .
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.
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.
Although the technical mind I think is bugged more about precision rather than flow or poeticness of speech Ι think we can appreciate it...
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.
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.
Everybody else: "FOO"
And the world keeps on turning.
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.
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.
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.
Edit: It looks like the tool already marks "very" for omission.
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.
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.
It really does work though. Through peer review, I found that making some changes along these lines vastly improved some of my stories.
For example, "quiet" would have "silent" rated as 1, "roomy" might have "spacious" listed close to 0, and "gorgeous" would have "pretty" as negative.
http://www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/diction/diction.1.html
Wat.
To whoever posted this, thank you very much.
Other acceptable alternatives:
s/very/fantastically/
s/very/heart-breakingly/
s/very/awesomely/
s/very/literally/
-- Heathers
be careful not to overuse hyperboles.
I find it hard to argue with Strunk on this and most other things related to writing.