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Comment by Maciek416 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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 Economist Style Guide disagrees:

http://www.economist.com/style-guide/unnecessary-words

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.

I don't know what it means to "degrade from the semantics and syntax of a sentence".

It makes for shitty writing.

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 ...").

You've just used it, in context, effectively!

No. Joesmo mentioned it, but did not use it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinction

You're right.

But what about "thusly"? I'm pretty sure that should never be used.

It can, on occasion, be used thusly.

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.

I'd go further: run a analysis of word frequencies and identify the meaningless ones amongst the most frequent.

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.

Also, "of course" and "obviously".

The most useful words for a mathematical writer :)

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 is no need to avoid useful words, even if they are used often. The problem is with words that don't change what you say while making it longer.

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.

That is not quite the exact opposite, as they draw from different corpora. Both would be interesting and quite possibly useful.

well Macie at the end of the day it worked for Dickens and Dumas :-)

Apologizes for using footballer speak :-)

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