Words that writers should avoid where possible

Harvey Stanbrough edited my novel, Switcheroo, and during that process I read his book on Punctuation for Writers. His advice is to avoid using state-of-being verbs whenever you can. They do not show action and do not engage the reader. There are only a handful:

• is
  
• are
  
• was
  
• were
  
• be
  
• being
  

These are often accompanied by have, has, and had, which you should also avoid whenever possible. Once you've finished writing a piece, it's a good practice to go back and circle every state-of-being verb. Then, try to recast each sentence that contains a state-of-being verb into an active sentence. You won't be able to in every case, but every change you make from a passive construction to an active one will render your writing stronger, more interesting, and more effective.

Here is a list of other weak words

a bit, a little, about, actually, all, almost, alot/a lot, already, am, appear, approximately, are, back, basically, be, been, began, begin, being, close to, could, definitely, down, even, eventually, exactly, fairly, feel, felt, few. finally, good, had, heard, here, highly, imagine, instead, is, just, just, kind of, like
look, maybe, .might, mostly, nearly, nice, not, now, of the, out, ponder, possibly, practically, pretty, quite, rather, really. seem, simply, slightly, so, some, somehow, somewhat, sort of, start to, started, suddenly, tend to, that, then, there, to be, to the, truly, up, use, utterly, very, was, went, were, which, who, wonder, would


Sources on the web:

http://lbarker.orconhosting.net.nz/redundancies.html
http://abagond.wordpress.com/2007/02/20/style-guide-weak-words/
http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/wordines.html
http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=4411
http://www.writersdock.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=31
http://www.writersvillage.com


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