Weasel Words

Cleaning up Your Prose

We are offered bushels of writing advice. Most of it isn’t helpful. “Show don’t tell” is one notorious example. Every good writer does both. I’m currently re-reading War and Peace. Tolstoy didn’t get the memo about show-don’t-tell. He’s Leo-damn-Tolstoy and he “tells” whenever he feels like it.

But in this short post I offer something actually useful, even — dare I say it, in violation of another rule — very useful!

I recently stumbled on an article entitled Hunting Weasel Words on the Substack of Matt Bell, a gentleman with whom I am not otherwise acquainted.

My sincere thanks to Mr. Bell for this article.

(I think I was tipped off to Bell’s article by Denise Robbins, so thanks also to her.)

Bell says this:

Weasel words are the empty calories of sentence writing, little bits of filler that, while technically correct, either don’t add anything meaningful or prevent you from writing the best sentences you can. Some of them can be simply deleted, while others will need to be replaced with something better; doing so will make your fiction more concise, more interesting, and more unique.

Right. A nice concise summary.

I find these words make my sentences hedged, tentative, stiff, mushy, unclear, hard to follow … .

Mr. Bell provided this list of weasel words in his article:

finally, suddenly, always, sometimes, again, really, even, still, like, something, anything, everything, thing, mostly, almost, surely, perhaps, maybe, at last, quite, then, and then, of them, of the, once, else, just, merely, seem, large, huge, big, wide, great, long, massive, giant, enormous, vast, tiny, small, little, hard, soft, weak, thick, thin, strong, strange, weird, think, understand, wonder, know, find, very, every, grin, smile, shrug, nod, look, see, watch

That’s a good starter pack.

Before reading Bell’s article, I noticed that I overused certain terms — “as well as” is one example. So, before finding his article, I’d already hunted for those, and took out most of them.

So I had some idea of the process I would use hunting for weasel words.

I have a draft of a multi-volume novel. I’ve been working on it since 2018. It is about 350,000 words long, so far. It is about 80% finished. I plan to finish it and start publishing book-length installments later this year.

Before I make the final push to finish drafting, I decided to hunt down weasel words.

Most likely — I thought! — there will be a few cases where these words show up and I can make an improvement.

Using CTRL-F searchs, I began digging through my manuscript for the words on Mr. Bell’s list.

I was appalled.

The document was saturated with weasel words.

Thousands of them.

As I searched, I noted other over-used words, which I added to my “search and destroy” list. I found other articles about weasel words, and added more words to search for and target for removal.

The process of searching for weasel words and removing most of them accomplished three things.

1. Removing the weasel words, or replacing them, always made the sentence better.

2. Looking at a sentence with a weasel word often caused me to rewrite the sentence, and sometimes also the surrounding sentences, improving them.

3. I saw the entire manuscript with fresh eyes, allowing me to revise it usefully in many places.

My draft is better as a result.

It was time consuming, but worth it.

Hopefully, I will now be immunized against using weasel words in the initial drafting process for the remainder of this project, and future projects.

I strongly recommend searching through your draft document, finding each weasel word, removing it where it will improve the sentence, and rewriting the sentence as needed.

If you find that you overuse some word or phrase which is not on anyone else’s list of weasel words, hunt those down, too.

Relatedly, this process is also good for checking on contractions, and being consistent in how you use them, e.g. “I am” → “I’m” — for each case, ask yourself, which works better? It’s usually the contraction, especially if a character is speaking.

Also, relatedly I suggest stripping down the use of powerful words. Such words are heavy artillery shells. Use them only for major impact. For example, I use the word “sob” only in important instances of characters weeping, not minor ones!

I’d be interested to hear about the practice others follow to eliminate such words.

Appended below is the list of weasel words I searched for, how many I found, and how many remained after I edited.

I hope this post will be helpful.

You may want to use my list below for your own searches.

******

Weasel Words: Before/After

Actually: 28/11

A few: 13/0

Again: 40/28

Agree: 362/52

And then: 34/1

Almost: 186/55

Always: 207/76

Anything: 155/41

Appear: 26/7

Argu: 29/15

As if: 43/16¹

As well: 54/11

Attentive: 11/2

At least: 72/4

At the time: 99/2

At that time: 38/3

Basically: 2/0

Began to: 60/ 2

Big: 161/86

Case: 52/33

Challenge: 60/16

Could have: 25/5

Could not: 164/20

Course of: 14/0

Devastate, Devastating: 8/2

Did not: 348/28

Directly: 36/15

Direct: 25/16

Else: 43/17

End up: 11/8

Ended up: 18/5

Enormous: 11/5

Essential: 33/7

Even: 395/201

Every: 149/84

Everything: 134/35

Few: 309/10

Finally: 86/19

Find: 103/53

Found: 180/76

Giant: 1/1

Gigantic: 6/2

Going to: 206/18

Great: 173/78

Hard: 119/73

Had not: 97/21

Had to: 109/8

Have to: 61/16

Have not: 6/4

Hear: 85/61

He had: 617/345

He has: 10/7

He is: 55/20

He knew: 155/7

He noted: 1/0

He said he: 90/0

He said she: 16/0

He said that: 1/0

He would: 518/151

He said they: 18/0

Huge: 12/6

I am: 158/47

I have: 53/32

I will: 100/60

Important: 90/16

Increas: 133/6

In fact: 19/4

In part: 38/9

In reality: 8/0

It is: 80/22

Just: 408/165

Kind of: 14/9

Know: 207/118

Large: 204/47

Like: 499/ 383

Likely: 90/7

Little: 107/49

Long: 293/65

Look: 775/206

Looks like: 2/2

Lot of: 79/2

Many: 407/83

Massive: 31/11

Maybe: 81/59

Merely: 12/2

Most: 403/110

Mostly: 87/13

Need to: 35/14

Needed to: 33/6

Nod: 31/14

No idea: 26/9

Notice:107/26

Often: 113/27

Of the: 2241/1123

Of them: 188/35

Once: 111/28

Once,: 18/11

Overcome: 18/6

Partially: 12/8

Perhaps: 18/3

Possibl: 168/25

Powerful: 17/13

Probably: 51/9

Prompt: 47/9

Prove: 26/11

Quite: 20/14

Quizzica: 16/1

Rather: 53/2

Reality: 14/10

Realiz : 130/4

Really: 125/68

Recent: 74/8

Recogniz: 33/17

Resolv: 46/15

Searching: 18/12

See: 351/235

Seek:18/3

Seem: 244/ 77

She said she: 48/0

Shrug: 7/3

Simply: 33/11

Slight, slightly: 14/3

Smile: 30/23

Smiled: 70/30

Smiling: 70/30

So: 524/245

Soft: 105/100

Some: 546/124

Some of: 73/25

Something: 177/51

Sometimes: 92/32

Somewhat: 12/0

Started to: 31/4

Started to: 5/4

Starting to: 10/1

Still: 188/111

Strange: 22/19

Strong: 85/51

Suddenly: 44/8

Surely: 0/0

Swarm: 11/11

That: 4401/219

Then: 733/287

There is: 54/19

They are: 29/14

They had: 201/8

They would: 264/65

Thick: 22/10

Thin: 8/5

Thing: 85/33

Think: 201/115

Thought: 315/83

Thoughts: 21/12

Tiny: 17/9

Tried to: 111/60

Try to: 44/6

Typical: 81/7

Understand: 77/29

Various: 75/2

Vast: 6/4

Very: 115/46

Was not: 326/116

Was told: 1/0

Watch: 36/10

Weak: 29/23

We are: 78/22

We have: 49/19

We will: 116/33

We would: 5/3

Weird: 26/24

What is: 15/2

Who had: 62/22

Wide: 70/22

Will not: 32/19

Within: 99/18

Wonder: 4/4

Would have: 159/51

You are: 137/42

You had: 10/5

You will: 56/24

1. Lisa Kuznak suggested “as if” as a weasel-phrase in a comment to this article. Lo and behold, when I went back to look, there were several weasel-ish appearances of this phrase. A good addition to the list!