The "I don't want to talk about AI" thread, and the new topic is: words we dislike

I just got feedback (VERY constructive, I was really appreciative of the comment) that I need to add more punctuation to my poetry. Can I please have your commas? I'll give them a nice home and they won't have to die.

More punctuation in poetry? Do those same people look at the Mona Lisa and complain she should show some teeth when she smiles and that Picasso should have used more red during his blue period?
 
Pale, pasty, fair-skinned, (completely skinned, yikes), whiteish, vanilla, white chocolate beauty, snowy white, ivory, milky-white, a chalky-skinned ugly duckling, albescent, pallid, ashen, sallow (the ainti-swarthy), faint, bloodless, a ghastly, deathlike Aryan, light-skinned cornrow wearing wanna be, opalescent, and lastly alabaster.
Fair enough. Although I'll stipulate that each author is allowed one use, in all their collected works, of "alabaster" to describe a character's skin.
 
Pale, pasty, fair-skinned, (completely skinned, yikes), whiteish, vanilla, white chocolate beauty, snowy white, ivory, milky-white, a chalky-skinned ugly duckling, albescent, pallid, ashen, sallow (the ainti-swarthy), faint, bloodless, a ghastly, deathlike Aryan, light-skinned cornrow wearing wanna be, opalescent, and lastly alabaster.

Slow down, slow down, I'm making notes for my next story!

"White chocolate beauty" - that's a keeper, right there!
 
Pale, pasty, fair-skinned, (completely skinned, yikes), whiteish, vanilla, white chocolate beauty, snowy white, ivory, milky-white, a chalky-skinned ugly duckling, albescent, pallid, ashen, sallow (the ainti-swarthy), faint, bloodless, a ghastly, deathlike Aryan, light-skinned cornrow wearing wanna be, opalescent, and lastly alabaster.
"Her skin was the colour of the underside of a fish that had washed up on the beach a week ago."

The true master of similes was Terry Pratchett. At one point he describes Ankh-Morpork as "as full of life as a dead dog on a hot summer's day".
 
Well, that image stinks up the conversating.
"Her skin was the colour of the underside of a fish that had washed up on the beach a week ago."

The true master of similes was Terry Pratchett. At one point he describes Ankh-Morpork as "as full of life as a dead dog on a hot summer's day".
 
The word "utilize" should not exist. There is nowhere the overly grandiose "utilize" is better than plain "use."
 
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