This post is a real drive-by as I am working on something epic, the news of which I hope to share with you all soon, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share something a writer friend of mine e-mailed to me. Am I the only one who hasn’t discovered the awesomeness of Kim Blank’s Wordiness website? Wordaholics and fans of stripped writing must check it out:

You can get a good start by avoiding “there is/are/was/were,” “it is/was,” “that is/are/were,” and “which is/are.” You can also try to dump what I call “wazzle” (waffling and fuzzy) words, like “actually,” “aspects,” “basically,” “definitely,” “quite,” “really,” “situation,” “truly,” “ultimately,” and “very. ” Actually, these are basically fruity habits, and they can truly go in most situations. “Could,” “should,” and “would” are also famous wazzlers (in case you missed it, these strike-outs illustrate words that can be deleted from the sentence without reducing the meaning: “these fruity habits can go”).

I was in heaven going through her list of deletable words. The list is long. Very long. I know many of us are up to our eyeballs in NaNo right now where extra words are a bonus, not a hindrance, but come Dec. 1 when we have to edit that bad boy, Kim Blanks list of unessential words will be a godsend.

Here’s my pet peeve: in actuality, and she agrees, delete that sucker, it serves no purpose. True facts = facts (unless you’re texting a teenager, then it becomes trufax). By and large is also a teeth-grinder for me.

What are some of your wordiness pet peeves?

Good luck to the NaNoWriMo warriors. We’re in the home stretch now!

Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She has written two novels under the pseudonym Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter--both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President's teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins.
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