by Peter Leavell, @PeterLeavell
Words are the best. I love the way the word blasphemy sounds.
Yet, there are words in the English language that make us cringe.
Moist
Pustule
Dripping
Wifey
Hubby
Goiter
Adolescent
It gets worse. Dishes. Vacuum. And to combine two words to make one horrible sound, fold laundry.
While these words are cringeworthy, none is quite so bad as the word it. Not only must you search out its antecedent, it is short, stubby, and obnoxious. It is cheap, as if you send money with your husband to buy a large, soft purple bath towel and he comes home with an economy roll of paper towels.
It should act like a place marker in your manuscript. It means you’ve missed an amazing opportunity to enrich your writing.
Let’s look back a few paragraphs as an example. It gets worse. What gets worse? Define it. The reader’s mind must jump backward through a list of words, then crawl to the blog’s beginning and finally title to see that it means we’re discovering the worst word of the English language.
It gets worse.
How could the sentence be rewritten? How would I edit it out?
I use the word as a marker when editing. I see that not only is it a problem, get is weak as well.
I’ll consider using the following fix— Just when you thought the list couldn’t be worse, Dishes and Vacuum step into your life—Or I might cut the sentence completely.
I understand. Sometimes, it’s the best you can do. Luckily, readers are trained not to see the word it. Just keep it (the it tip) in the back of your mind as you write, and perhaps you’ll find another way to enrich your work.
Philip Anderson keeps his past close to the vest. Haunted by the murder of his parents as they traveled West in their covered wagon, his many unanswered questions about that night still torment him.
His only desire is to live quietly on his homestead and raise horses. He meets Anna, a beautiful young woman with secrets of her own. Falling in love was not part of his plan. Can Philip tell her how he feels before it’s too late?
With Anna a pawn in the corrupt schemes brewing in the nearby Dakota town, Philip is forced to become a reluctant gunslinger. Will Philip’s uncannily trained horses and unsurpassed sharpshooting skills help him free Anna and find out what really happened to his family in the wilderness?
Peter Leavell, a 2007/2020 graduate of Boise State University with a degree in history and a MA in English Literature, was the 2011 winner of Christian Writers Guild’s Operation First Novel contest, and 2013 Christian Retailing’s Best award for First-Time Author, along with multiple other awards. An author, blogger, teacher, ghostwriter, jogger, biker, husband and father, Peter and his family live in Boise, Idaho. Learn more about Peter’s books, research, and family adventures at www.peterleavell.com