The Student Writer's Guide to Avoiding “Dead Words”

Writing is essential. Writing is critical. For the most part, though, I think writing is epic amounts of sheer enjoyment. It can take you to fantastical worlds created from someone's imagination. It can be used to explain how to build something. It can be used to dispense opinions on innumerable topics. You cannot have social media without it. Unfortunately, even though writing is necessary in so many ways, it is still an area in which millions of students struggle. What is worst of all, to me, is that when students struggle to write, they can feel like failures. I wholeheartedly believe, though, that the one of the biggest problems that students that have difficulty writing encounter is not that they cannot write—it is that they cannot figure out how to express their thoughts on paper without using the same words over and over again. They will start writing and be okay for a while because of the energy of their idea, but then fall into a rut where all of their sentences start with the same word. Writers may use the same boring, overused words repeatedly. That is where this book comes into play. As someone who has written quite literally hundreds of articles, reviews, reports and summaries, I can help students improve their creative writing and reports in a major way just by straying from what are known as “dead words.” At the same time, I hope to improve the confidence of this generation of student writers. What are “dead words” and why should you avoid them? “Dead word” is the name given to the most commonly overused words in everyday life and in writing. These words are dull, vague (at times), and worst of all, they can be hugely detrimental to your writing—especially when it comes to English and language arts classes. Your grades can actually be affected by using these commonplace words, because when you just fall back on dead words like “good”, “bad”, “really”, “pretty”, or “very”, then you are not showing your teacher or professor that you have learned any new vocabulary. (And if you ever say “very, very...” or “really, really...”, then you are just begging your English teacher to give you a D.) The fact of the matter is, you will have to use more refined vocabulary in order to get the grade you really want and need. Never fear, that is where I come in. Who ever said writing was easy? And why should you want this book? Well, no one who has done it for any length of time claims it is easy, anyway. Ask the student or professional writer that has spent countless hours, days, and months behind his or her computer if writing is easy. You might not get an actual response, but instead, an enraged glare. In this day and age of electronic media being involved in every aspect of our lives, it is challenging to sit down and focus for ten minutes, let alone several hours, to write a paper or a story. (Trust me—I spent six months writing this book.) Nevertheless, being able to write is crucial to your ability to move on in your education, as well as your adulthood and finding a career. If you cannot write well, then you are more likely to be left behind in today's world where jobs, especially those that pay well, are increasingly more difficult to locate or secure. This book is a guide for students young and old that have difficulties composing written thoughts or generally just struggle to find better words than those utterly boring, overused dead words that plague so many term papers, book reports, or stories. Even if you like writing, there is value to this book. It can help you fine-tune your writing ability by picking more appropriate descriptive words for the specific subject matter of your writing project. Anyone can make a giant laminated chart with a list of replacement words on it, but this book will help you make sense of those replacements, and choose which works for your specific writing. Think of it as a thesaurus that actively works for you. The major problem with normal thesauri is that they are mere lists of synonyms (and antonyms). They do not break down when you should and should not use each synonym—in other words, the context of each word. Let's look at a couple of examples: Example: Yes: The thing about professional athletes for me is that I think they are all spoiled. No: The object about professional athletes for me is that I ponder they are all spoiled. The first sentence is perfectly acceptable and makes sense. The second one, however, does not make sense for multiple reasons. Firstly, the word thing does not mean a physical object in the context of that statement. It is an abstract usage of the word thing. Secondly, while the words think and ponder can often be synonyms, in this particular case, they are not. The speaker is not pondering if athletes are spoiled—he is telling his opinion of them by using the word think. Saying that he ponders that they are all spoiled can imply that he is unsure of whether they are or not. This then defeats the entire purpose of his statement because he is clearly quite sure of his opinion. Here is another example: Yes: The skateboarder got a broken bone in his fall the other day. No: The skateboarder contracted a broken bone in his fall the other day. The word get can mean dozens of different things, and one of them is “to suffer an illness or injury.” One of the synonyms in such instances is contract. However, you cannot contract a physical injury. You can only contract illnesses. Therefore, you cannot use it in this example. These are just two examples. It is important to remember that you must know the meaning of the word you wish to use as a substitute. Plus, there are times when you will simply not be able to avoid using dead words. And that is okay. It happens. Many times, using a less common word will clutter your writing and make it “clunky”, or just cause it to not make any sense. Also, in many instances while you write, you might simply want to throw a different word into your writing just to not sound repetitive. True, readers and teachers do not want to read the same words over and over again, because it sounds unnatural and it is highly monotonous. However, you need to be just as careful in doing this as you would be in making sure all your sentences don't start with the same word. This book will help you make sense of dead word synonyms and how to best utilize them, or if, depending on your unique situation, you should use them at all. Remember, it's all about three things: necessity, meaning, and flow. What else should you know about this book? First and foremost, though I would like for it to be the case, this is not the end-all, be-all for finding better words. For virtually every dead word listed in this book, there are synonyms for each that I probably did not list. It is entirely possible that there is a synonym I did not place in here that you will find in a standard thesaurus that fits better in your particular paper. Great! As long as you know the unique definition and usage for those words, go for it. Ultimately, I just want your paper or story to be better, even if it is only in some minute way. Hopefully, if your confidence in your writing is wavering, I can help you in that regard, as well. Increasing your vocabulary is my obvious goal for this book, but if you are reading this, then you probably just have a paper to write and want it to sound better. I am at your service. With that said, start browsing!