filler words

Those pesky filler words don’t need to be there. Get them out of your writing. You just don’t need them. They only serve to take away from and weaken your story. If you think you even need them, think again. We always think we know best. Trust me, we don’t.

The above paragraph has filler words in them. They’re the ones in bold face print. I put them in there on purpose to prove a point. To prove my point, I’m going to retype it and take them out. You’ll see how much better it sounds.

Those pesky filler words don’t need to be there. Get them out of your writing. You don’t need them. They serve to take away from and weaken your story. If you think you need them, think again. We think we know best. Trust me, we don’t.

Sometimes you will need to use them. After all, they are part of the English language and they are there for a reason. The problem is we tend to use them to much. When they’re used too much, that’s when they weaken your writing. When I was editing my novel The Triunix of Time, I had a list of these words to look for in my story. I went through my book and looked for each one of them one at a time and checked them off as I finished with one, then I went on to the next. Don’t worry, I used the Find option in Microsoft Word. It found them all in an instant. As it turned out, I initially used the word just 350 times. Talk about over use. Please see the grid below for a list of the most used filler words.

Editing Notes: A Filler Word Extravaganza | elena johansen

So, how do you know you need to use them? Say the sentence without the filler word in it. If it still makes sense, you don’t need it.

If you have any questions please feel free to message or email me. I enjoy helping others with their writing.

Filler words (weak words) can run rampant if you aren’t paying attention. Those pesky dandelions can do the same thing. We wake up one morning and they’re there. Overall they look pretty, but they’re still a weed and need to be gotten rid of because they do turn ugly. Filler words turn your beautiful piece of writing ugly too. You can’t see it though until you go back over your piece of writing and realize they are everywhere and they sound awful. A list of filler words are listed below. There are more than the ones I have listed here. These are just some of them.

Just	Only	Much
A lot	Perhaps	Always
Very	Really	Actually
Rather	Stuff	Literally
In order	That	Slightly
Seem	Sort of	Kind of
A little	Somehow	Can
Then	See/saw	Definitely

There are better ways of saying what you want to say without using the above. Do you have to go without using them? No. By any means use them if you so choose. But if you do, be aware they don’t pack a punch. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes you have to use them. In oral conversation we use these words all the time to get our point across and to emphasize something. In the written realm you want to make sure what people are reading creates the intended visual of what you’re saying to they’re retention of it is good. You want to make your point.

The question becomes: when do we use them and when do we not use them? There is a sure fire way to know this. If your sentence makes sense without it, delete it. Also ask yourself this question: is there a better way of saying this? If you get stuck trying to figure out a better word to use for a particular weak word, you can always go to Google and look up stronger words for the word ‘very’ for example. You will get a list of ideas.

Being concise is what you want, so be careful with what words you use. Write first fix later.