HYPOCRITES in the LANGUAGE FAMILY

By Bonnie Stanard

As I read Richard Edwards’s article “10 Words Editors Hate” I got an adrenaline rush. He affirms my view that some words have become frauds, and we writers are betrayed by using them.

It’s reassuring that I’m not the only person who cringes when I see the word soul, which heads the list. Why do I have the idea that writers who use this word are trying to reveal some deep and intense spirituality? By the way, I doubt that  intense spirituality comes out in words.

The word love is number three on the list. It’s a trouble maker. We cover a lot of emotional territory with that one word. What parents feel for their children may be something that nurtures, impedes, or even destroys. And what about a child’s reaction to a parent? A teenager’s crush? A debaucher’s wanton passion? In sentences, the subject love is promiscuous in selecting direct objects, which might be a book, a movie, Las Vegas, or the Dalai Lama. Love is a belly-fat cliché. When will we come up with precise words to replace it?

The concept of forever is inconceivable, as Edwards points out, so the word is given an impossible task. But that’s not what bothers me. It comes across as an immature effort to be emphatic. I picture the writer chewing gum and blowing bubbles as they type it.

Then there’s light, life, and death. Edwards says an editor will shut down at the sight of these words. Write about them but don’t write the words. I get it about life and death, but light? I’d put dark on the list ahead of light. And as I write this, I know I’ve written dark many times. Light too. I use these two words to express feelings, which by the way is another no-no, i.e., don’t write the word feeling. But stories without feeling are basically news reports, so he’s saying write about feelings without using the word.

Dianne Urban’s article, “43 Words You Should Cut From Your Writing Immediately,” goes overboard. I’d put her word immediately in a list of words to avoid. She makes a good point about words like said, replied, and asked. She suggests we surround dialogue with action and leave out dialogue tags. This doesn’t always work, especially if there’s a quick exchange of comments.

Urban puts the word begin on her list and I applaud that. There are occasions when it might be needed but most of the time it’s like a preview to what is coming next. And who needs a preview when our writing is hot with action?

We once had a writer in our group who took issue with the word that (one of Urban’s 43 words). He marked every that in a paper. Now there are times when you need that. That’s a fact.

Many of Urban’s words are weaklings that undermine your writing, such as completely, then, just, literally, actually, somehow. But what’s wrong with breathe, shrug, nod, think?