"That" Word

Setup: You know the one. It's that word that you always misspell, or that word that you can't help but think is overused, or that word that only makes you hate whatever sentence it's in. For me, that word is "disappear." Every single time I write it, I spell it "dissapear" and I know it's wrong. I always immediately change it, but it's become a habit to misspell it before actually spelling it right.

Question: The point is, do you have "that" word? Is there a word out there that just upsets you for whatever reason?

 

I'm a juster. I removed over 100 instances of 'just' from one manuscript. I do it in forum posts as well, and emails. Not sure if I do it in speech because that's less easy to monitor, but I probably do. Many women are socialised to be justers.

I also removed fifty fucks, though.

 

to be replaced with varying... shades of grey?

Mine's a word combo, two words actually, paired so often they ought to be compounded. 'Sort of' – I cringe when I write it, and similarly when I read it. I think my manuscripts are full of seemingly and apparent as workaround consequences.

 

Sergent, I mean it makes sense to spell it Sargent as it is spoken that way,
yet the incorrect spelling due to a single letter. Grrr...(Damn Mil-Sci-fi).

Haven't done my swear word count yet, hoping it isn't too high.

 

I have a whole book of them. It's called "the dictionary."

But words like "accommodate" and "resistant" are almost always decorated with those little red squiggly underlines.

 

I couldn't agree more. Words suck. We should get rid of words completely in favor of interpretive dance.

 

For some reason I misspell "definitely" every single time. (And yes, I did misspell it when writing this post )

 

Now that's the opening line to a book I would read.

I'm a so'er in dialogue. So many "So, blah blah blah"s in my work.

 

I'm a so'er in real life, like when I'm telling stories to my friends, but I don't have that problem when I'm writing. I don't really have any words I regularly misspell or overuse, that I can think of, but I definitely have a problem with sentence structure. I tend to punctuate written sentences so they 'sound' like the way I'd say them out loud; a semi-colon doesn't 'sound' like a period, a full stop. Unfortunately, that means I tend to overuse them and have to pay a lot of attention to actually ending my sentences. >_>

 

I pray to the Shade of Noah Webster, every day, for this era of the mandatory "So" to end. You can't have a documentary or interview or
explanation of anything where every second sentence doesn't begin with "so". Avoid it like salmonella!
On the other hand, since people in all walks of life do overuse it, dialogue without "so" is unrealistic.
Similarly, "conversation", to mean any form of social interaction, and "impact" in place of "affect" or "influence" are so cliche that I want desperately to avoid them, but so common that boycotting them makes dialogue sound artificial. People do speak in cliches!

I also hate "grab". Unless the house is on fire, never grab anything in a story. I'm not sure why that word puts me off; maybe it's simply ugly.

I do use 'intelligible' and 'occasional' but can't spell them correctly on the first try.

 

Yes, leave it to the frogs (no offense to those who are French) to be a pain in ass.

 

Nor English spelling, for that matter. I get the red jitters under neighbour and honour and traveller.

Right!

we-e-e-lll....

 

I'm a juster too. I'm southern, so I'm probably more of a jusser. It's how I talk, and my dialect winds up in my writing all the time.

My problem word is necessary. I could not spell that word to save my life, so I actually spent 40 years avoiding it.
It's quite the useful word too, so one day I sat down with a notebook and I wrote the word over and over and over and over.
Now I have a really common and handy word to use again.

 

Had someone do a grammar review of my WIP, and they informed me that from a reader's perspective, it's not a problem, but from an editor's perspective, I use too many 'suddenly' and the likes. I blame my old English teacher; a couple of my bad habits (none of them really bad, but they're not good habits) I remember learning from him. Brilliant man, but he was definitely one of those teachers who uses absolutes.

 

As an editor, I react strongly to the problems I have as a reader.
As a reader, I'm annoyed by repetition - both of words and of actions - explanation, contradiction and sloppy grammar.
If the author couldn't be bothered to proofread, why should I waste my time?

 

That word swap works in a very specific subset of erotica, and never because 'molest' is nicer. I've seen it done well; I've seen it done poorly.

 

weird. I usually try to use the word strange but weird is the word that feels more natural for me. I always get the E and I in the wrong position.

 

Bureaucracy is one that, more often than not, I don’t even get close enough for spell check to identify it for me.

Then it’s off to Google. Fuck that word.

 

I always want to spell it like "beaurocracy" for some reason. The sound that the bur part makes argues with my brain about the spelling of bur. On top of that, it's not even pleasant to say. It's like the word "rural." I vote to excise both of those words from the English language.

 

I have an issue with this as well.

We call it the Newspeak dictionary, I think we are at volume 2018 edition or is that 1984 .

Prolouge and Epilouge ..... I always try to spell it just the way I did. If course it's Prologue and Epilogue.

Also Teh. Fucking Teh.

 

The one that really stands out is Colonel, how does that sound like kernel?
Talk about a leap in mental gymnastics.