{"id":464,"date":"2022-03-08T22:54:05","date_gmt":"2022-03-08T22:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onlydavesmith.com\/?p=464"},"modified":"2022-03-08T22:54:05","modified_gmt":"2022-03-08T22:54:05","slug":"words-suck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onlydavesmith.com\/?p=464","title":{"rendered":"Words Suck"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There are loads of adverb haters, people who say they would like to exterminate them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I agree only to the point that you often don\u2019t need them if the rest of the page is okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take, for instance, this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cClearly,\u201d Beau said, \u201cthis is a really bad sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearly and really add nothing to the meaning. I have gone through my own works in progress and searched for these words. Out of every twenty I find, there may be a reason to keep one. Maybe. Very is the same and more so. Unnecessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there are the speech tag haters. They are mostly but not always right. Consider the speech tag for Beau. We probably know Beau\u2019s talking, or that it\u2019s his turn to talk. Or that he\u2019s the one who\u2019s likely to say something like this. He\u2019s a bit of a pill that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found some short stories by Agatha Christie that I don\u2019t remember having read and saw that she seldom used speech tags. When Poirot is speaking, everyone knows he\u2019s speaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, one genteel murder suspect in an English country home must at times be discriminated from another. Best done with a descriptive phrase. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were playing tennis all afternoon,\u201d said Basil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basil struck a match. \u201cWe were playing tennis all afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second is much more fun, as long as there is not so great a hurry to get on with the interrogation that you can\u2019t add a couple of words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, we don\u2019t need the adverbs or the speech tag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are left with, \u201cThis is a bad sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why use the pronoun?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBad sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isn\u2019t that enough? If we know what\u2019s going on and someone\u2019s assessing the quality of a sentence, I mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And maybe it\u2019s better if we just say, \u201cSucks.\u201d or \u201cShite.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, a novel is not film noir and we can\u2019t ask every character to be so fascinatingly non-verbal that we can reduce the dialogue to a bunch of monosyllables and grunts but if you are prone to over-writing, as I am, the idea of pairing it down as far as possible during editing is vital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Really vital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Really, very vital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are loads of adverb haters, people who say they would like to exterminate them. I agree only to the point that you often don\u2019t need them if the rest of the page is okay. Take, for instance, this: \u201cClearly,\u201d Beau said, \u201cthis is a really bad sentence.\u201d Clearly and really add nothing to the … <\/p>\n

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