Overused and empty words

[nycguy]

Fake News

Think out of the box

Haters - when used to describe everyone who has different political view points

War On [insert here] - war on women, war on religious freedom, etc

Whatever

Dude

Bro

Get a Life

VGL

Baby Daddy

Baby Mama

[LaffingBear]

My elemetary school teachers taught us not to use the same word too often in any writing. They introduced us to the thesaurus.

 

A graduate school instructor once told me I wrote well, but I had a tendency to sound like I swallowed and threw up a thesaurus.

 

As an adult, I make an effort to overcome, or edit, to avoid the excessive communications habit instilled in childhood.

 

Im better with the word-choices. Still, not so much, with the brevity.

[+ oldNbusted]

My elemetary school teachers taught us not to use the same word too often in any writing. They introduced us to the thesaurus.

 

A graduate school instructor once told me I wrote well, but I had a tendency to sound like I swallowed and threw up a thesaurus.

 

As an adult, I make an effort to overcome, or edit, to avoid the excessive communications habit instilled in childhood.

 

Im better with the word-choices. Still, not so much, with the brevity.

 

I too fear brevity will never come naturally, but I try to "omit needless words".

[+ purplekow]

My elemetary school teachers taught us not to use the same word too often in any writing. They introduced us to the thesaurus.

 

A graduate school instructor once told me I wrote well, but I had a tendency to sound like I swallowed and threw up a thesaurus.

 

As an adult, I make an effort to overcome, or edit, to avoid the excessive communications habit instilled in childhood.

 

Im better with the word-choices. Still, not so much, with the brevity.

 

My elementary teachers encouraged thesaurus use to insure desirable vocabulary variation. A graduate instructor praised my writing despite its vomited thesaurus vibe. I still work on this. I am better but need to be briefer.

 

Your version 82 words Mine 34. I found yours more colorful and endearing. Sometimes more is more.

 

Word I do not need to hear: Snowflake.

[+ sync]

"believe me" (courtesy of a recent political campaign)

[+ azdr0710]

Going forward

[instudiocity]

PUT ME AT EASE

I'm not even sure how the fuck you do that.

[Beancounter]

Bless your heart!

 

People think I'm using this expression to console someone when, in fact, I'm being condescending. Been in the South way too long, me thinks.

[BasketBaller]

Continue on.

True fact.

The reason is because.

Just saying.

[Beancounter]

Yuge!

[+ purplekow]

Sad!

[MikeyGMin]

"I'm sorry you feel that way" - what the hell does that mean 'cause it's not an apology?

I'm sorry you feel that way because that is one of my favorite non-apology apologies! I use it all the time at work with just a small amount of condescension to mean, "I don't give a shit, do it anyways."

[gallahadesquire]

Really?

Seriously?

Win-Win

[JayCeeKy]

Strunk & White (Elements of Style) still guides my writing since college. Especially Rule #17

 

17. Omit needless words.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

For full text of Strunk & White:

 

http://www.jlakes.org/ch/web/The-elements-of-style.pdf

[Beancounter]

With that said....

 

Having said that....

[+ nycman]

Think outside the box

Drill down

Team player

Game changing

Value engineering

Buy-in

Best practice

Let's take this offline

 

....and any other business school bullshit phrases.

[+ pitman]

President Trump

[+ MostlyLurking]

Literally. (Which almost never means literally.)

 

There is something perversely delicious in the pervasive use of "literally" - figuratively.

[+ Charlie]

Bless your heart!

 

People think I'm using this expression to console someone when, in fact, I'm being condescending. Been in the South way too long, me thinks.

I loved it last year when Nicki Haley used that response to Trump's criticism of her. I don't think he understood her.

[bostonman]

Anything "Hashtag"

#annoying

 

As a musician, "#" to me is "sharp." I don't use twitter, but I think if I did, I'd say "sharp" instead of "hashtag" lol.

[+ Charlie]

"...you know..." before almost every sentence. (I realize it is a place-holder to prevent the listener from interrupting before the speaker has said all he or she wants to say, but you know, I find it irritating--you do know that, don't you?)

[+ Charlie]

Being referred to as "@Charlie."

[bostonman]

"...you know..." before almost every sentence. (I realize it is a place-holder to prevent the listener from interrupting before the speaker has said all he or she wants to say, but you know, I find it irritating--you do know that, don't you?)

 

Ha! I remember studying this back in a linguistics class in college. "Um" serves the same purpose.

 

I had a friend in college who used to end most of her thoughts with "do you know what I'm saying?" - I actually tried to get her out of that habit by explaining the above concept of fillers - and she actually got herself to stop saying it!

[bostonman]

I've wrestled with the overuse of "robust." I feel that it used to be a word I heard fairly rarely, and then, really only to describe a food or drink's strong flavor. Then all of a sudden I started hearing about a meeting's agenda being robust, or a program being robust, and similar things. A lot. And that use may well be appropriate, but it seems like it's used a lot more (and to my chagrin) than it used to be.

[DiscoveringMe]

Literally, if this thread goes on any longer I won't be able write another sentence at the end of the day. I clearly don't have the right skill set but it is what it is.

 

Whatever. I guess going forward I'll have to find alternative words. With that said, it could be a win-win for everyone involved, just saying.

 

If you have any ideas on how to avoid these words feel free to ping me and we can take it offline.

 

#atalossforwords