If you want your prose to be elegant, impactful and entertaining, removing words often makes it more of all those things.
Taking stuff away is usually better than adding more.
It’s true in your writing too, where ugliness can be avoided by losing useless verbiage:
1: THAT. Particularly redundant, in phrases like “5 words that you can stop using now”
2: SO. Do not start sentences with so. No more needs saying.
3: LITERALLY. Most of the time, you mean metaphorically anyway.
4: I THINK. If you only think something, it may not be true. Don’t dilute your insights like that.
5: HONESTLY. If only the thing you just said was honest, was everything else a lie?
What are your favourite-yet-ugly words?
Jonny
PS: It’s Facebook February exclusively in the JHM FB Group, and each day there’s a new Pro-Tip to improve your Facebook game. Here’s yesterday’s.