Copywriting note: ‘That’, ‘very’, and ‘actually’ can almost always be cut. I think we say them just to give our speech better meter.
Very.
Natalie Goldberg first introduced me to the idea that superlatives are generally unnecessary. Most things in life are or are not a certain way; it’s binary. It’s stronger, she says, to just declare that a thing is [whatever] than to try too hard with emphasis and blow it.
That.
‘That’ can clarify, but usually it just wastes space:
- “He told me that he was leaving.”
- “He told me he was leaving.”
No different, and there’s one less wrinkle for your brain to process.
Actually.
Most people just use this word as a beat. Again, it’s the binary thing: Most events in life happen or don’t happen; most things are or are not. Reinforcing their reality doesn’t add anything meaningful.
“She was actually very angry.”
Wasn’t she just angry?
The only place it’s useful is in stating an objection, reversing the idea in question, as in: “Actually, it’s not okay for you to bite me there.”
Or, I suppose, if you’re expressing disbelief — but, again, I think you can leave the effect up to the reader to interpret.
“He was four years old. He tied his own shoes.”
That does the job without us having to underscore that this is exceptional.
Okay, time to get back to work.
I’m even copy-editing this silly thing: I just changed “Natalie Goldberg was the one who first introduced me” to “Natalie Goldberg first introduced me”.
This is the kind of bonsai writing I spent my day doing. I’m grateful to be involved in copywriting, because it’s taught me a great deal about writing — especially the marketing copy, in which you have to question every bit of mental work you ask the reader to do.
It’s like watching Casablanca versus a modern film: Casablanca sounds like a stage-play that ran for ten years, with every word specially chosen and polished before it made it to the screenplay. Most modern films sound like a couple of people ate pizza, drank beer, said a bunch of stuff back and forth, and just wrote that down.
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