Re: JUST. I can't find the quote, but years ago actress Tyne Daly spoke about how she would go through the "Cagney & Lacey" scripts and remove the word "just." She believed it to be a diminishing thing that women say -- "I just feel, "I just want" -- and that "just" didn't show up in the scripts when male characters were speaking.
A few years ago, someone in my field (history) did a study of scholarly articles by women and found that they used "just" much more often than male authors. They also used more conditional language, i.e., "it may be concluded from this" as opposed to "the conclusion is...." Women scholars also cited more sources, especially secondary ones. There's a ghost of imposter syndrome lurking around even the most competent and confident women, at least those of us raised mid-century. (And it was only with great restraint that I didn't start the previous sentence with "It seems that....")
I once edited a novel in which every single character was described as “smiling widely” and often more than once. There were several dozen uses of the phrase throughout the manuscript. When I pointed this out to the author, she didn’t see it as a problem. Nor did she see other quite obvious flaws as problems either. So, smiling widely, I referred her to someone else
🤗 Suddenly feeling somewhat less embarrassed about my overuse of those *exact* same words! Of my own ~85k-word manuscript, there were at least 275 uses of “just.” I guess we all have our blind spots when it comes to our own work.
A post on FB offered to create a word cloud based on my entries and JUST was twice the size of it's next competitor. I've banished it and, while it sometimes takes a few extra words to do without it, it's always more accurate, more descriptive and more punchy without.
Thank you! And Brava to your kind and generous honesty! As a teacher of and writer for actors, directors, and writer-directors, I have campaigned for 40 years against the use of “it’s just…” because whether it appears in print or in conversation with one’s colleagues in a creative endeavor, it does nothing but diminish the power of a storyteller’s ideas. Likewise other useless qualifiers like “obviously…” and “sort of…”
My maternal grandfather Carroll Carroll (yes, his real name when he became a writer -- comedy shows, adman, radio writer during the golden age of radio -- he wrote for the big names; poet, journalist [Variety], reviewer, and (after he retired) a ghost writer, penning celebrity "memoirs" and "autobiographies" admonished me when I was a fledgling writer. Seriously fledgling. A kid at his knee, eager to learn the tricks of the trade. Born in 1902, he was a guy who never graduated high school (he' d cut school in the South Side of Chicago to go to the movies and would review what he saw in his journal -- which I still have -- from 1915-17). He admonished me to omit all the "useless words" such as "really" and "like" -- words that don't mean anything and just (oops, there it is!!) take up meaningless space in a manuscript. He never wanted me to use them in conversation, either. I suppose if I were writing a character of a certain age and background (Valley Girl, vocal fry) there would just be a lot of you know, like, extra, words in her dialogue. But even I would want to limit her page time. :)
Hi Susan, I’m waiting for my editor to finish my copy edit, too, and reading your words is such a great thing for me to do during this time. Hopefully she won’t find much more to fix in mine than yours did in yours. I tend to deliver my work pretty much ready to roll, too, so we’ll see. Good luck to you!
What a delightful bit of writing! I had no idea! Now, i have a fantasy of an editor sitting on my shoulder providing this kind of commentary, and i would love it! A count of overused words? Great, bring it on!
Re: JUST. I can't find the quote, but years ago actress Tyne Daly spoke about how she would go through the "Cagney & Lacey" scripts and remove the word "just." She believed it to be a diminishing thing that women say -- "I just feel, "I just want" -- and that "just" didn't show up in the scripts when male characters were speaking.
words fascinate me, really enjoyed how you broke it all down
A few years ago, someone in my field (history) did a study of scholarly articles by women and found that they used "just" much more often than male authors. They also used more conditional language, i.e., "it may be concluded from this" as opposed to "the conclusion is...." Women scholars also cited more sources, especially secondary ones. There's a ghost of imposter syndrome lurking around even the most competent and confident women, at least those of us raised mid-century. (And it was only with great restraint that I didn't start the previous sentence with "It seems that....")
I once edited a novel in which every single character was described as “smiling widely” and often more than once. There were several dozen uses of the phrase throughout the manuscript. When I pointed this out to the author, she didn’t see it as a problem. Nor did she see other quite obvious flaws as problems either. So, smiling widely, I referred her to someone else
🤗 Suddenly feeling somewhat less embarrassed about my overuse of those *exact* same words! Of my own ~85k-word manuscript, there were at least 275 uses of “just.” I guess we all have our blind spots when it comes to our own work.
To Wordy Bird! Someone is impersonating you and replying to every comment with some crackpot-sounding investment trolling.
Thanks Judith. I’m trying to figure out how to block the account. What an annoyance!
I've had this happen on IG and FB. It's super annoying--but your followers are smart and will recognize immediately that it's not really you.
“Just” is always my downfall.
Love this geeking out on editorial decisions.
But be gentle on yourself; your similes are always perfection and worth every fluffy "still" and "just."
"I spent a good long time picking out “stills” and “justs” from my book, as if I were removing ticks from a dog,"
Brilliant.
A post on FB offered to create a word cloud based on my entries and JUST was twice the size of it's next competitor. I've banished it and, while it sometimes takes a few extra words to do without it, it's always more accurate, more descriptive and more punchy without.
Maybe you're just being too hard on yourself. Still, you may have a point!
Thank you! And Brava to your kind and generous honesty! As a teacher of and writer for actors, directors, and writer-directors, I have campaigned for 40 years against the use of “it’s just…” because whether it appears in print or in conversation with one’s colleagues in a creative endeavor, it does nothing but diminish the power of a storyteller’s ideas. Likewise other useless qualifiers like “obviously…” and “sort of…”
My maternal grandfather Carroll Carroll (yes, his real name when he became a writer -- comedy shows, adman, radio writer during the golden age of radio -- he wrote for the big names; poet, journalist [Variety], reviewer, and (after he retired) a ghost writer, penning celebrity "memoirs" and "autobiographies" admonished me when I was a fledgling writer. Seriously fledgling. A kid at his knee, eager to learn the tricks of the trade. Born in 1902, he was a guy who never graduated high school (he' d cut school in the South Side of Chicago to go to the movies and would review what he saw in his journal -- which I still have -- from 1915-17). He admonished me to omit all the "useless words" such as "really" and "like" -- words that don't mean anything and just (oops, there it is!!) take up meaningless space in a manuscript. He never wanted me to use them in conversation, either. I suppose if I were writing a character of a certain age and background (Valley Girl, vocal fry) there would just be a lot of you know, like, extra, words in her dialogue. But even I would want to limit her page time. :)
I am going to share this with my students!
But still… I just wanna read joyride soon!
Hi Susan, I’m waiting for my editor to finish my copy edit, too, and reading your words is such a great thing for me to do during this time. Hopefully she won’t find much more to fix in mine than yours did in yours. I tend to deliver my work pretty much ready to roll, too, so we’ll see. Good luck to you!
What a delightful bit of writing! I had no idea! Now, i have a fantasy of an editor sitting on my shoulder providing this kind of commentary, and i would love it! A count of overused words? Great, bring it on!
Ha!