writing is harder than ever. it is also easier than ever. you can pick up a writing instrument of any kind—analogue or digital—and put words down. but the difficulty comes from knowing what words to put down and how many is too many and how will it be interpreted and have i written too passively and how many ‘justs’ and ‘mights’ did i put in?
there’s been a lot of discourse around writing more actively over the decades and it formed a major part of writing guides in the early 1900s in particular. a notable example is The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. (later revised and expanded by E. B. White) that had a particular disdain for the passive voice. many linguists have since criticised the book for its arbitrary and strict rules including the folks at Language Log (some more critiques and debates about the book if you’re interested).
more recently, there’s been discussions on our use of words like ‘just’, particularly in wordplace email settings and how cutting those out can make you sound more confident and assured. i don’t know for sure if this works and i don’t know how that could even be measured but it’s popular enough to have inspired a whole Chrome extension.
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this is all to say that there are an abundance of rules around writing styles and i don’t think they marry up with the speed of linguistic evolution. younger generations are reinventing words and making up new ones at a phenomenal pace and i don’t see who some of these guides even work in those contexts. we can correct children on their grammar and language all we want but we were them once and we had our own cool new words that became old very quickly.
harsh cuts to verbiage to the point of sounding cold and purely directive is bad but i think adding additional words in an attempt to appear more scholarly and important all while addressing points gathered and researched for the purposes of a blog post that in all honesty nobody will read seems incredibly unnecessary (ahem). it’s all about finding that middle ground. the word ‘just’ isn’t a bad word. it has a purpose. you’ve just got to find it and not fixate on the number of times you use it too much.
in my opinion, if someone reads a non-critical email and points out the number of ‘justs’ and ‘coulds’, that’s their character flaw, not yours. different circumstances call for different types of language but i don’t think cutting them out for everything is a sensible default. and yes, i said “don’t think” because it’s subjective and i know that people would disagree. it’s not a hill i care enough about to die on.
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so what could help you find that balance?
- consulting the wisdom of crowds. find people you trust enough to give you an honest opinion on whatever you’re writing. you don’t need harsh criticism but sugar coating won’t help either. encouragement and helpful suggestions to get you where you need to be with your writing will goes a long way.
- imagining someone wrote the thing to you. how did it make you feel? what instantly stuck out to you? hone in on anything that popped into your head and make those changes. if you’re really unsure, leave it in. your uncertainty may be unnoticed to someone else. a great friend once reminded me while working on a presentation that the client wouldn’t know what you cut out so if it has to go, let it.
and avoid chatbots for writing advice as much as you can. grammarly sucks and given what chatbot training data is made up of, you’ll end up in a circle of your own doubts. or confirmation bias will win and you’ll learn nothing.
for me, it’s about conveying a message and staying as human as humanly possible. i know neurodivergent people are (falsely) perceived as cold and robotic but that’s really down to perception. sometimes you gotta get to the point. other times you can embellish and cushion some of those words (like the difference between adding a full stop to a WhatsApp message when you’re angry vs adding ‘lol’ so they know you’re joking. don’t lie, you know you’ve done it before!) but it has to come down to what decision you make in your writing, not someone else with a checklist and a book to sell.