Replace the “Very” in Your Sentence

Re:Replace the “Very” in Your Sentence by Peritract on Friday October 14, 2022 @07:19AM (#33202037)

This is one of the most pernicious pieces of cargo-cult writing advice that gets smeared all over the internet.

When writing, you should think carefully about your word choice, and adapt it for your audience, context, intended effect, etc.

"Lose the very" is the exact opposite of thinking carefully. It ignores all the subtle shades of meaning that different words bring. Almost no words have direct swap-in synonyms.

If you follow this advice, you end up with a mess of incoherent verbiage that (probably) says something very different to what was intended.

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Re:Replace the “Very” in Your Sentence by zeroxp on Friday October 14, 2022 @07:24AM (#33202083)

When you say very different, you could have just said skittish. "It's skittish from what you intended". Isn't that much better?

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Re:Replace the “Very” in Your Sentence by johnpublic on Friday October 14, 2022 @07:48AM (#33202278)

actually, the website says "very different = distinct". So "it's distinct from what you intended."

Which I actually prefer.

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Re:Replace the “Very” in Your Sentence by denton-scratch on Friday October 14, 2022 @08:26AM (#33202582)

Not the same. "Distinct from X" means that it can be distinguished from X; "very different from X" means that it's hard to mistake it for X.

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