11 Feb 08 Put a period on it.

Certain phrases in the American vernacular are simply too wasteful. Grammar Nazis and other OCD types will tell you conversational speech in general society is not only mechanically incorrect, but loaded with fat.

Part of the art of writing is making it more concise.  You take a rough draft and slim it down to 20-30% of its original size. Trimming the fat is the brunt of the work for most writers. By nature I’m a bit of a minimalist, so I’ve learned to spit out rough drafts that are small in the first place. One has to ask: why don’t people do this with speech? Why all the extra words?

My brother and I have discussed this at length, some of the useless phrases often tacked on to sentences.

and what not. (the most annoying, due to the rising popularity of this phrase)
and so forth.
and such.

You can even prepend your sentences with things like “essentially….”. Such implicit phrases are not really essential to the sentence, so why add it on? Are you padding it up to sound smart, or disguising the fact that you have very little to say?

Here are some other examples of ways to trim up a sentence.

He’s not on time very often.
He’s often late.

Or how about this? The word “literally”. It’s used often, and usually incorrectly.

She’s literally as big as a house.
She’s as big as a house.

Or other stuff that’s  often used as padding:

She’s a sweet gal, of friendly nature.
She’s a friendly girl. 

There are thousands of examples. Don’t do it! In writing and speech, don’t pad up your words. Usually when people make a deliberate effort to sound as if they use an exemplary vocabulary in casual conversation, they sound like a moron. (See what I did there?). Often times these people are mocked on their departure from the room. I’m having too much fun with this. Good night!