Stoyan Stefanov

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wordiness

Started (again, but this time immagonnafinish!) working on OOJS second edition. I'm finding some wordiness I'm gladly deleting.

"pretty" isn't

"Pretty" is just as bad as "very". And here's what Mark Twain has to say on "very":

Substitute damn every time you're inclined to write very; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

I had "pretty soon". That's just "soon".

I also had "pretty good". It can simply become "good", but I thought better yet why not try to find a more descriptive word. I had written that learning JavaScript is "a pretty good deal" because you learn one language and you can program for many different environments (shell scripting, mobile, etc). At the end I decided "smart investment" is much better than "pretty good deal".

more often than not

That's just plain "often".

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One Response to “wordiness”

  1. On Technical writing checklist @ Stoyan Stefanov said:

    […] Filler word. Delete. […]

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