There are words we are not supposed to overuse. My favorite word to not overuse is 'that'. As a general rule of thumb, if you have a sentence with 'that' in it, read it out loud twice - once with 'that' in the sentence, once with it omitted.
If the sentence makes sense without 'that', you could probably leave it out.
Caution:
If you are concerned you are using 'that' too often and decide to trade it for 'which', be sure 'which' fits in that place. Perhaps 'that' is necessary.
Here are some words I love to overuse:
it
was
look
could
anything ending in ly - my favorite!!!
Something to work on. That(mwahahahaha)'s all for now. What are your favorite words to overuse / not overuse?
2 comments:
'That' comes up a lot for me too. I'm more conscious of it now and try to omit the thats. Mostly my first drafts have too many adverbs and adjectives, I also use weak words like almost, practically, very, really etc.
I'm pretty ruthless abouts 'that,' it's actually influence my style a bit, working toward dialogue and narrative that doesn't sound modern but also doesn't sound awkwardly archaic.
I used to be equally ruthless about 'was' in my academic efforts to cut passives out of my papers. Good intention, until it made some fiction sentences really weird, when they should have a 'was' in them. Now I'm getting sloppy again!
I'm prone to weak words, like Charmaine, without realizing it. A lot of little things like "just" and "almost," as well as some transitionals like "when," "moment" (in a moment, a moment later...) and lots of turning "she turned to find...") And that's not even getting into my noun and verb crutch words!
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