The 46 Most Overused Words & Phrases in Writing in 2021
We all do it.
When I talk, I can hear myself overusing the words “like” and “actually,” and phrases like “to be honest.” These are often referred to as filler words or crutch words.
They are like the “um” equivalent in writing.
Everyone does it when they write.
Most people don’t really notice the overused phrases until they are pointed out, such as in the editing process.
It’s no big deal — that’s part of editing!
But it’s still good to be aware of the MOST overused words and phrases so that you can start to see them as you’re writing and self-editing. You’ll end up with a better final product.
What to do about them
This is important: Don’t just swing over to the closest thesaurus and replace all overused words with random synonyms.
In some cases, you can remove the words and phrases entirely and not simply replace them with a mishmash of ten-dollar vocabulary words. When that happens, removing them leaves the content’s original meaning intact.
Examples of words that can often be removed: like, nice, in fact, actually, that, very.
