Ironing out those verbal tics, by Jenny Harper

We all have them. One pal overuses 'Absolutely!'.  Another repeatedly describes things as 'poignant' instead of 'pertinent'. Our guide on a recent holiday used the phrase 'Ladies and Gentlemen' so often that it became teeth-grindingly irritating. (After he left the group, it became the biggest joke of the week, so there was a silver lining.)

I think we all have words and phrases we overuse when we write - the trick is to become aware of them, so that we can root them out. A former mentor pointed out that I used the word 'little' far too often. More recently, I was severely taken to task for continually inserting the word 'though' as a qualifier.

There's an amusing way of spotting such irritants. It's called Wordle (http://www.wordle.net/) Simply copy your entire manuscript into the relevant dialogue box and press a button and - hey presto! - the most commonly occurring words are captured, in the exact proportion they are used, in a graphic word cloud form.

Then you can play with the result, changing the font, colour and patterns to suit yourself.

Here's the word cloud I made for my novel, Loving Susie. You'll see my three main characters there, nice and big, just as they should be. But wait a minute - there's one missing! What has happened to Jonathan, the fourth family member?

It's all right. I finally remembered that I call him, variously, Jonathan, Jon and Jonno, so each name will be a third of the size.

But the important point is that 'little' and 'though' are so insignificant that they barely feature. Phew! Then again, 'something' is worryingly large - I might have to take a look at that.

Here's a wordle of Pride and Prejudice. What was most important to Jane Austen? Well, interestingly, 'love' is small and so are 'marriage' and 'married'. And 'though' is quite prominent!

What words do you find you have to try to avoid when you're writing?