This could be 'very' useful to you

A lot of us have issues with different words/words choices as in we find ourselves using them more often than we should.

For me its always been very. I write it on the fly then when I edit get annoyed and fix it and occasionally it takes a couple minutes to come up with a better words

Someone passed this list on to me and its been a big help, figured I'd pay it forward.

lovecraft68 said:

A lot of us have issues with different words/words choices as in we find ourselves using them more often than we should.

For me its always been very. I write it on the fly then when I edit get annoyed and fix it and occasionally it takes a couple minutes to come up with a better words

Someone passed this list on to me and its been a big help, figured I'd pay it forward.

Click to expand...

Even easier - just drop " very" from the left-hand column and use the plain English word that's left.

Not to be contentious, but the words in the right column don't have quite the same meaning as those in the left minus the "very". It's a useful tool for those of us with hangups on certain words.

GrandTeton said:

Not to be contentious, but the words in the right column don't have quite the same meaning as those in the left minus the "very". It's a useful tool for those of us with hangups on certain words.

Click to expand...

Naw, I think it's a very good list!

Thanks to lovecraft.

This list is so very!

Veritably!

I use Roget's Thesaurus.

lovecraft68 said:

A lot of us have issues with different words/words choices as in we find ourselves using them more often than we should.

For me its always been very. I write it on the fly then when I edit get annoyed and fix it and occasionally it takes a couple minutes to come up with a better words

Someone passed this list on to me and its been a big help, figured I'd pay it forward.

Click to expand...

If you doubt the words on the right, try saying a few out loud.

"Excruciating"

"Compelling"

"Petrified"

"Pouring"

"Ashen"

And especially "Gleaming"

"It was excruciating watching her gleaming thghs rub together as she crossed and uncrossed her ankles under the opressive July sun"

"Oppressive" is my contribution.

And, yes my Roget's is a paperback copy I got in middle School in 1969 or 70. It shows it's age. While it may be a bit archaic to use a book when Mr Gates has programmed a more complete Thesaurus into Word, I find the pages, um, er, oh yes, compelling.

(PS: And I never autocorrect "Roget's" to "Roger's". My buddy Roger is a great Mechanic, but he is frequently at a loss for, sans, bereft, without words )

...................

The list is great. Very is dangerous. There’s always an opportunity to edit and those out add something more succinct and stronger. But then if it makes you string words together like this....Magic.

KindofHere said:

And then you end up with:

Sparks flew as metal grated against metal. The electrified flames tumbled through the air, their frenzied dance upon the cobbles silenced by the rumble of the transport easing to a halt. I had to clear my head before I could understand the world again.

Click to expand...

KindofHere said:

And then you end up with:

Sparks flew as metal grated against metal. The electrified flames tumbled through the air, their frenzied dance upon the cobbles silenced by the rumble of the transport easing to a halt. I had to clear my head before I could understand the world again.

Click to expand...

I don't think you need to worry too much about overusing 'very.'

'Very' isn't really a dangerous word. It's a cheap word that gets the job done. Sorta.

Edit: I just searched my current story for 'very'. It comes up in other words like "every," and once or twice in dialogue. This is a 30K word story. The one use of 'very' that got my attention was in a translation of a few sentences from the beginning of a story by Alexander Dumas.

I wonder. If he had translated that himself, would he have used 'very'?

”When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart.”
—Mark Twain

GrandTeton said:

Not to be contentious, but the words in the right column don't have quite the same meaning as those in the left minus the "very". It's a useful tool for those of us with hangups on certain words.

Click to expand...

I agree that some of replacements change the meaning. For instance, "very noisy" doesn't necessarily go all the way to "deafening." Some of them are fine enough. Some, like the original "very perfect" are just wrong. There are no relative degrees of "perfect." And in that case, "perfect" might be a better fit in some contexts than "flawless." There also are contexts where the "very" qualifier is just fine.

The bottom line is that the list is probably useful (maybe even very useful ) to those who know what they're doing to begin with in word usage.

Oblimo said:

”When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart.”
—Mark Twain

Click to expand...

Umm, sometimes yes, sometimes no. This is one of those "I'm a professional writer and need a catchy writing tip to attach to my name" quotes that fits in the "don't try this at home" category for many developing writers. It's also one of those quotes that begs you to go see if the author actually did that in his/her writing themselves.

KeithD said:

Umm, sometimes yes, sometimes no. This is one of those "I'm a professional writer and need a catchy writing tip to attach to my name" quotes that fits in the "don't try this at home" category for many developing writers. It's also one of those quotes that begs you to go see if the author actually did that in his/her writing themselves.

Click to expand...

Twain is usually light on the adjectives, but this passage from "Connecticut Yankee" is interesting in the light of that advice:

"As a rule, the speech and behavior of these people were gracious and courtly; and I noticed that they were good and serious listeners when anybody was telling anything—I mean in a dog-fightless interval. And plainly, too, they were a childlike and innocent lot; telling lies of the stateliest pattern with a most gentle and winning naivety, and ready and willing to listen to anybody else’s lie, and believe it, too. It was hard to associate them with anything cruel or dreadful; and yet they dealt in tales of blood and suffering with a guileless relish that made me almost forget to shudder."

I could be mistaken, but I suspect Twain is deliberately violating his usual rule here to create a specific effect.

His adjectives evoke the idealised version of Camelot, but they're contradicted by the rest of his prose: these are "gracious", "childlike", "gentle", "stately", "guileless" people, who lie and who delight in tales of brutality, and their "good and serious" listening only lasts until the next dog-fight.

The quoted advice on adjectives warns that they weaken when close together. In this paragraph Twain brings them together in pairs: "good and serious", "gracious and courtly", "childlike and innocent". By my reading, Twain is setting up his adjectives to fail, as a way of undermining the heroic view of Camelot. It'd be consistent with the general attitude of the book.

If so, it shows that Twain understood the need to make exceptions to that rule.

Thankee! I hope I am not a culprit! Now I have to go back and reread stuff.

................

I think I'm prone to using three adjectives--triangulating the image.

...............