If you’re following along, this series is in no particular order. They’re just (remember this word, just) the top ten things I catch when editing other writers’ works (and yeah, self-editing my own, as well). They’re in the order I thought of them when I decided to make a list.
Read the first one here, as well as the long intro to the series.
The short intro: Words often get in the way of good writing.
We’re looking at words to get rid of because they’re doing more harm than good. Every word matters.
In the first of this series, we talked about throat-clearing words and phrases (and pages, sometimes).
Crutch words
Crutch words are similar to throat-clearing, but they’re words that are embedded in our way of speaking, writing, and thinking so deeply, we don’t even know we use them.
Every writer has them. They will likely be different for every writer.
Mine is the word just. I caught this years ago, and now I know to edit them out mercilessly. I don’t know how…
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