Member-only story
Write Lean, Write Clean
Free your prose of crutch words.
“Blurby, blurby, blurby,” shouted C. Robert Constable, my high school English teacher. He stared in mock anger for a beat at the guilty student. His eyes magnified into huge googly-eyes by the thick lenses of his glasses. Then, with drama, he broke and cracked a smile. “Yogi,” as we called him in honor of his bear-like persona, was on a mission. Rumors were a-wing. Graduates from our rural Ohio high school had flunked English at a nearby college. Yogi was tasked with teaching us to write.
My friends and I loved Yogi. He treated students with respect, friendship, and frankness. We repaid him by not squealing to the principal when he lumbered up to the second-floor classroom, late for homeroom. After graduation, he starred as the sole teacher we visited. We dropped in on him at his home in Yellow Springs and watched him as he cooked exotica. For us inexperienced Midwesterners, that meant he stir fried icicle radishes. Not only had we never witnessed stir frying, we had no idea radishes could be six inches long and white.
Yogi’s mantra for excellence was to limit our writing to only necessary words and to make those words vivid. In our spot of the world and at that time, there existed a tendency to confuse ornate, flowery speech with education, style, and substance. Useless filler phrases like “in my opinion” and “seemed to be” crept in and gummed up the works. Yogi made it clear. If the phrase or word could be struck without losing meaning, erase it.
In speech, such words and phrases fill in gaps and pauses. Known as “crutch words,” common examples are “like,” “so,” “actually.” Clearing speech of crutch words and fillers like “um” requires increased awareness of them along with comfortableness with pauses in speech and silence.
Crutch words in writing rarely are necessary or a positive addition. Many, such as “that” and “a bit” are problems shared by most writers. In addition, each writer will find they have their own particular stable of overused, inexact, “blurby” words. “Just,” “but,” and “so” are some of mine.
There are several ways to avoid boring, hazy, and flabby writing. I keep a list of crutch words by my computer. As an editing tool, I use the “find” function of my word processing software and highlight them in my draft. Then I scrutinize the results, omit or change many if not most of these words, and am happy. I also ask myself when I’m looking over a phrase or sentence if the meaning will change with its removal. If not, out it goes. The third, last, and most important action I take is to evaluate my verbs and nouns. I want pithy, unique ones when possible. Crutches often arise as an attempt to qualify or emphasize a verb or noun. (Think “very,” “really,” “definitely,” “immediately.”) By replacing “to be” verbs with more specific verbs, using juicy nouns, and avoiding passive voice, the need for crutch words evaporates. Give it a try. Yogi knew what he was talking about.
