Eureka!

by Walker Royce

  IMPOTENT ADVERBS

  One of the most common speaking and writing problems is the overuse of empty adverbs. I call them impotent adverbs because that is what they are. Impotent is defined by Dictionary.com as follows:

  impotent:

  not potent; lacking power or ability

  utterly unable (to do something)

  without force or effectiveness

  lacking bodily strength or physically helpless

  I purposely omitted the fifth definition, which is the one most people think of when this word is used. The first four definitions help capture the problem well; the fifth gives the term impotent adverbs some teeth so that it bites into your memory.

  Here are the top 10 most abused words in the English language. All are almost always powerless, ineffective, and weak.

  actually

  really

  very

  basically

  literally

  fundamentally

  essentially

  frankly, or quite frankly

  truthfully

  honestly

  A few other prepositional phrases are misused just as frequently.

  In fact…

  As a matter of fact…

  The truth is…

  To be honest…

  Of course…

  Not only are these phrases impotent, they are frequently used in an arrogant way to assert facts when, in fact, they are representing an opinion or a subjective observation. This is more common than you might think, especially with professional speakers, writers, and entertainers. If you pay attention for the next few days, you will probably notice someone who uses these words and phrases far more often than they should.

  If you think that providing emphasis is a good reason to use these adverbs, consider this: “It was literally 105 degrees!” may sound more forceful than “It was 105 degrees!” But it adds nothing, and you end up putting the focus on the word literally rather than on the 105 degrees, which is the intended focus.

  “It was literally raining cats and dogs.” Such a statement only serves to prove the speaker illiterate, besides illiteral. People mistakenly use literally to add emphasis. I was literally irate. She literally had a cow. The show was literally cancelled. The use of literally is literally moronic. It should be reserved for very precise usage, meaning word for word or actually, and not an exaggeration.

  If Fred threw Ethyl under a bus, you could say, “Fred literally threw Ethyl under a bus.” In this case, it would mean that even though “being thrown under a bus” is a euphemism for having blamed someone for something, Fred actually did throw Ethyl under a bus and you should interpret those words in their strict meaning, not figuratively or metaphorically. So it should be used, like actually, in those rare instances when the obvious interpretation is wrong and you intend to tell the reader to interpret your words literally.

  When you overuse such adverbs, your audience is affected in two ways. First, they are distracted. People notice when any word or phrase is overused, and they stop concentrating on the substance of your message. Second, the audience comes to believe that when you don’t say the overused word, you mean the opposite. For example, if you use “frankly” in most sentences, you condition the audience to think that you are not being frank when you don’t precede a sentence with frankly. The last thing you want is for your audience to focus on your (lousy) style instead of on the substance of your message.

  Try this experiment the next time you encounter impotent adverbs in your speaking or writing: Eliminate the impotent adverbs, then assess whether there is any change in meaning. I will wager that 95% of the time, there is no change in your message. These words are almost always used superfluously.

  Here are some examples of adverb abuse taken directly from a popular book that I used to research some material for this book. I am amazed that this professional author’s writing style was not edited more thoroughly to eliminate such wordiness. It shows how rampant impotent adverb abuse is in our communications. These excerpts showcase impotent and arrogant adverbs.

  “Actually, to be honest, in a couple of the examples the stakes were fairly low at first, but with time and growing emotions, the relationship eventually turned sour and quality of life suffered—making the risks high. These examples, of course, are merely the tip of an enormous and ugly iceberg of problems.”

  The writer uses an unnecessary actually, followed up with an even more unnecessary to be honest. While our English teachers were steering us away from double negatives, they forgot to tell us about double impotents. For good measure, the author throws in an impotent eventually, which restates his previous words, with time.

  “In fact, given most people’s long-standing habit of costly behaviors, it’ll probably require a lot of effort. The truth is, people can change. In fact, thousands of people we (the authors) have worked with over the past decades have made lasting improvements”.

  This example uses an unnecessary assertion of fact to begin three sentences in a row. That is some heavy evidence! Now I really, really, really believe what the author is saying. Unfortunately, it serves the opposite purpose and dilutes the validity of the assertion.

  “Frankly, most people have trouble pulling themselves away from the tractor beam of the argument at hand. Besides, it’s not like you can actually step out of your body and observe yourself. The truth is, we all have trouble monitoring our own behavior at times.”

  Here is more of the same, although you can make a good case for using actually. To me, it’s still unnecessary. Read all three excerpts without the bold words. Aren’t they more convincing?

  Although these examples are only mildly annoying, they were written by a professional author in a popular book. If you take a critical look at the ramblings, writings, and verbal presentations of everyday people in business, entertainment, and academia, you will observe an incredibly common pattern of impotent adverb abuse and declarations of truth. In fact, I don’t honestly know if that last sentence is actually true, literally true, or essentially true, but frankly speaking, I fundamentally believe this sentence sounds really annoying.

  I first became aware of adverb overuse when I watched a tape of myself giving a presentation. My group was preparing to present a concise, persuasive description of a project’s value to a government audience. We videotaped our presentations at a rehearsal, then reviewed the tapes and critiqued them with a speech coach who helped us refine our content and delivery. I was confident of my speaking ability and welcomed the exercise.

  I reviewed my tape alone, prepared to discover that I needed to make a few small improvements. I was horrified by the number of times that I used impotent adverbs. I didn’t overuse just one of them; I overused all of them! When I sat down with the speech coach, I confessed my speaking sins immediately. She was surprisingly less concerned about my problem than I was. She thought my overuse of adverbs was a minor infraction compared to the sins of my cohorts. She said my overuse of impotent adverbs was barely noticeable because I used so many different ones, there was little repetition. Nevertheless, this experience indelibly scarred my brain. I have observed so many speakers with this problem that I see it as the most common abuse of the English language.

  I once confronted a valued employee who overused the word actually like most people use “er” or “um,” namely as an unintentional transition marker between thoughts or sentences. This is a common problem. He was unaware of his “actually” obsession when I first discussed it with him. The next few times he spoke, he was so self-aware of his overuse that he was nearly tongue-tied. He would say actually, catch himself, shake his head, lose his train of thought, and stumble. It really set him back, and his communications skills suffered for weeks. He slowly regained his comfort and resolved his overuse.

  One of the most brilliant people I know had the worst adverb overuse problem I’ve encountered. He was a “basically” addict. He used basically in about 70% of his sentences, sometimes twice in the same sent
ence. As with most adverb overusers, he was especially prone to this habit when he was somewhat nervous, speaking in front of a large audience. His most memorable line was, “Basically, we have to get back to basics.” This sort of speaking and writing problem does not indicate a lack of intelligence or experience. It is simply a bad habit that even the smartest, most articulate among us can pick up without realizing it.

  I wasn’t the only person to notice my colleague’s annoying speech habit. It was his wellknown, annoying tic, although nobody wanted to confront him with it because he was a very senior executive. In one meeting, another colleague offered to bet me a lunch on the over-under for the number of times this guy (our boss at the time) would say basically in our two-hour staff meeting. (An over-under bet is a 50-50 proposition where you pick a number so that the outcome of an event is equally likely to be higher or lower.)

  I estimated that our boss would talk for about half the meeting and probably use basically once or twice each minute. I computed that 90 was about the right betting line. My colleague took the overs without even thinking about it—he was even more cynical than I was. And also a bit of a cheater. We started keeping a tally, and in the first 60 minutes the boss used basically 45 times. That made 90 look like a fair guess. As my colleague started worrying about his bet, he began asking short questions that prompted longwinded responses. This kept the boss talking, chalking up more and more opportunities to say basically this, and basically that. I lost big as the outcome finished somewhere north of 120. (My colleague and I didn’t get much out of that staff meeting!)

  Do you want your audience—no matter who they are—to focus on such trivial distractions? Again, these adverb-abuse problems are not the bane of the illiterate. They can surface in some very intelligent, well-educated, and accomplished people. By the way, we confronted our boss, who resolved his bad habit. It took him about a year, and his communications effectiveness improved remarkably.

  PUNCTUATION ABUSE

  Misuses of punctuation can be similarly annoying. Two examples in today’s world are the overuse of “quotation marks” and the overuse of parentheses (these neat little devices that let you slide comments into a sentence). I suspect these misuses are more prevalent in the information technology world where there are more people with programming skills and backgrounds: Punctuation must be used precisely in programming languages. Quotation marks are typically used to identify literal text such as for a printout command. Parentheses are used to nest expressions into operations and structure the parameters to be applied to an operation.

  I observed this annoying habit in my own writing long ago. I even tried to reform by switching from “double quotation marks” to ‘single quote marks.’ My copy editor quickly slapped some sense back into me for replacing a bad habit with incorrect usage.

  Whatever the reason, there is more and more impotent and arrogant punctuation cluttering up professional writing, email, and literature. Here is an example email that I received from a vice president of a Fortune 500 company. All of the different forms of emphasis are his.

  Actually, my “concern” here is that while we work with Tom to “improve performance” (due to HR’s recommendation), we are still not executing the plan with the “sense-of-urgency” and tenacity that’s fundamentally required. Honestly, we don’t have the luxury of waiting for or hoping for his improvement.

  He couldn’t have cluttered up this sentence with more distracting styles of emphasis and punctuation abuse if he wanted to. He used the impotent adverbs actually, fundamentally, and honestly; three sets of unnecessary quotation marks; one set of unnecessary parentheses; and two underlined phrases. The funny thing is that all his polite and politically correct (i.e., inherently long-winded) verbiage just masks his real intent: We need to replace Tom. That takes five clear words. There is a definition of political correctness that goes something like this: the belief by some people that you can pick up a turd by the clean end. That’s what comes to mind when I see such drivel. I want to scream, “Get to the point!”

  Many writers overuse quotation marks to add emphasis, tone, or suggestive accents. While it is occasionally a good practice to make a word stand out, it is incredibly annoying when you make too many words stand out. If you try to raise the emphasis, suggest a new meaning, or add tone to too many words in a sentence, you muddle up the real emphasis and tone.

  William Saffire opined eloquently in one of his New York Times columns that quoteunquote is essentially used to sneer. He observed that when written or spoken, the words quote-unquote translate into so-called and are intended to cast aspersions on the word or phrase that follows. Here is an example.

  TV anchor commenting about the reporters at a competing network: “The reporters at station KXYZ are engaged in quote-unquote journalism in a way that improves their ratings.”

  The quote-unquote modifier to journalism is similar to the use of “journalism” with quotation marks to suggest that the word is being used disparagingly.

  Overusing quotation marks comes across as arrogant. Some authors may believe they are creating a new meaning or usage of a word, but this is rarely true.

  Another annoying habit of many, many speakers is overusing “if you will” and “this is what I call…” These terms are shorthand for “if you will allow me to coin the term.” Who needs it? Here are some typical examples.

  We need to do better planning in our projects. This is what I call “proper preparation.” [This is what everyone calls proper preparation!]

  We need to do better planning in our projects, proper preparation, if you will. [If I will what? If I will allow you to define planning as proper preparation? Who wouldn’t?]

  Overuse of parentheses (and brackets and curly brackets) is another rapidly growing (and bad) habit. It probably stems from the rising number of authors who have learned programming languages (like spreadsheets, Visual Basic, C/C++, Ada, Java, and HTML) where parentheses (or brackets) are frequently used to provide (syntactical and semantic) structure of programming code and organize (logical and mathematical) expressions.

  Do all the parenthetical comments in the previous paragraph strike you as confusing? This is because many people have a hard time with abstraction. Remove the parenthetical comments and you have this:

  Overuse of parentheses is another rapidly growing habit. This habit probably stems from the rising number of authors who have learned programming languages where parentheses are frequently used to provide programming code structure and organize expressions.

  Doesn’t this read better than the previous sentence? Yes. Did it lose any meaning? No. It is equally accurate and a little less precise. Would the added precision help the reader? Probably not. It simply adds unnecessary detail and confusion.

  MISUSING OR MISSPELLING WORDS

  As we rush to communicate with others—composing emails or writing up our work—it is easy to overlook some of the nooks and crannies of our language. There are many exceptions to rules, and some of the complexities of English can challenge even experts. Imagine how confusing these exceptions and sound-alike words are to people learning English as a second language.

  Although it would take quite a tome for a complete list, 90% of the most common misusages and misspellings can be captured in just a few pages.

  Accept is a verb meaning to agree to. Except is a preposition or conjunction meaning to exclude.

  Adverse means opposing one’s interest or desire; opposite or confronting.

  Averse means having a strong feeling of opposition or strongly disinclined.

  Affect is a verb meaning to change. Effect is a noun meaning result.

  All together is used to specify things considered one group. Altogether means entirely.

  Allusion is a noun that means indirect reference. Illusion is a noun that means deception.

  Assure is a verb that means to guarantee an outcome. Ensure is a verb that means to make certain. Insure means to guarantee against loss (like insurance).

>   Biannual means every two years. Semi-annual means twice per year.

  Capital is a city that is the seat of government, or an accumulation of wealth. Capitol is the building where a legislative assembly meets.

  Cite is a verb meaning to reference. Site is a noun meaning a specific place. Sight is a noun meaning something you can see.

  Climatic is an adjective derived from climate. Climactic is an adjective derived from climax.

  Compliment means praise for something or someone. Complement means an addition to something that makes it complete.

  Could of, should of,and would of are incorrect. Could have is a third conditional verb used with a past participle to describe a possible past action that is now impossible since a different action was taken. (That gives you a good example of the deeper complexities of our language.)

  Desert is a noun meaning arid landscape. Dessert is a noun meaning the last course of a meal, usually sweet. Remember that you want two helpings of dessert but don’t want to be alone in the desert.

  Discreet is an adjective meaning judicious or prudent or modest. Discrete is an adjective meaning distinct and countable.

  Elicit is a verb that means to draw out. Illicit is an adjective that means illegal.

  Farther is used to compare distance. Further is used to mean more of something.

  Forward is a direction. Foreword is an introduction to a book.

  Good is an adjective that describes a noun. Well is usually an adverb that describes an action. It can also be used as an adjective (for example, all is well, or she is not well). The comparative and superlative versions of both words are the same: good, better, best, and well, better, best.