Word Challenge: Can You Avoid These “Throat Clearers” and “Wan Intensifiers”?

One of my favorite books to keep nearby for reminders on grammar and word choice is Benjamin Dreyer’s Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style. It became a New York Times bestseller, which is remarkable when you think about it—a book about writing style can be that popular. It’s a gem that every writer should read and have on the bookshelf. Dreyer was Random House’s longtime copy chief until his retirement in 2023. He gets right to the point and offers a challenge in the first chapter: “Go a week without writing” the following words and phrases:

• very

• rather

• really

• quite

• in fact

• just

• so

• pretty

• of course

• surely

• that said

• actually

See if you can do it. Not easy, but it’s a terrific exercise that will go a long way to help you clean up your prose and force you to pay attention to unnecessary fillers (or, in his terms, “Throat Clearers” and “Wan Intensifiers.”). Dreyer allows you to use them in conversation and he goes on to add more words and phrases to the list in subsequent chapters. Start with these twelve. Keep a note of them on your desk like I do. For a bonus challenge, see if you can trim the word “that” from your writing too. For more about that, take that challenge.  

Credit: Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash