As a blogger, it should come as no surprise that I like to write. One of the reasons is that for me it's not easy. I started writing semi-professionally in the early 90's, and I'll never forget my first experience with an editor. I think I still have have the bruises (thanks, Lisa!).
I don't know how other writers feel, but I really like editors. They help me overcome my pathological aversion to the simple declarative sentence. Marcy, my wife, is a former graduate student and teaching assistant in rhetoric, so I have ready access to a tough editor in my own house!
One of the things I'm always on the lookout for is simple principles that serve to help raise red flags in my writing, and call my attention to something needing some more work. I recently had a friend and colleague review a whitepaper I was writing. She pointed out several extraneous uses of the word "that", and mentioned a former editor she worked with who constantly pointed this out in her writing. Sure enough, I've been able to remove at least half of the instances of "that" in my writing ever since. By the way, In editing this post, I removed about seven or eight instances of "that" from this paragraph!
Yesterday while spending some time on Wikipedia, I ran across an article containing a warning that it contained "weasel words". The link led me to a discussion of what weasel words are, and why they should be avoided in Wikipedia articles - they're a way of introducing opinion or bias into a piece of writing. I found the discussion applicable to any writing.
An example of some "weasel words" are:
- "Some people say..."
- "Some argue..."
- "Contrary to many..."
- "As opposed to most..."
In many cases, this is perfectly acceptable as what I'm writing is clearly meant to express an opinion or point of view. However, I'm often trying to convey clear, fact-based information, and an awareness of the effect weasel words have on my writing is important. The Wikipedia article goes on to explain some of these effects (quoting here from part of the Wikipedia article):
- Passive Voice. Weasel words are often in the passive voice, which weakens the effectiveness of written prose.
- Wordiness. Weasel words are sentence stuffing; they make sentences longer and less information-dense.
- Convoluted syntax. Weasel words require some convoluted syntax to get a point across. "A square has four sides" is a simple sentence; "A square is widely considered as having four sides" puts the key point into a strange little participial phrase.
- Repetition. There are only so many times in one paragraph you can say "X is widely regarded to have done Y" before it sounds far too constructed.
I've added this list of words to my "red flag" toolbox. This will help me greatly in my self-editing. With a tough editor like my wife, I try to "do my homework" and keep her red-pen marks to a minimum!
You can read the full Wikipedia article here, which includes a pretty extensive list of weasel words.
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