Verbal Tics and Crutch Words
- hbkiser
- Jun 20
- 2 min read
If you’re like most writers, you probably struggle with wordiness. Why use 5 words when you could use 50 instead, amiright? Kidding, kidding. I’m kidding!
Beyond general wordiness, we all have what I like to call crutch words—the little favorites you unconsciously lean on. Crutch words aren’t bad words; they’re just overused. When readers start spotting the same word again and again, the writing feels…thin.
The obvious response is to replace them. But what do you do when you’re not even sure what words make your own greatest hits list? How are you supposed to revise them out when you aren’t even aware that they’re there in the first place?
The first step is easy: run a quick word frequency check.
If you’re using WordCounter.net, copy and paste a few thousand words into the box and scroll down—you’ll get a full list of the most-used words, plain and simple.
In Scrivener, click Project > Statistics > Text Statistics, then open up Word Frequency and sort by count.
If you’re in Microsoft Word, open Find (Ctrl+F or Command+F) and search for any words you think you might be overusing or run the Editor tool under the Review tab to get suggestions. (It’s surprisingly good at catching repeats.)
In Google Docs, click Tools > Word Count for basic stats—but if you want real word frequency lists, you’ll need to install the free WordCounter Max add-on. I’ve not done this, but one of my friends claims it’s very quick and easy. Please do not call me for tech support — I’m not yer girl for that.
So now you have your list. Make a copy of it somewhere — a sticky note, a Word doc, in crayon on your wall — so you can continue to catch yourself over time. You can ignore the one million uses of “the” and other necessary words that naturally and necessarily appear frequently. Look at the other words, especially those that are less commonly used in most grammatically correct sentences.
Open your draft, use "Find" to hop to each instance, and when you land on one, ask yourself: Is this word pulling its weight? If it’s just taking up space, you can:
delete it altogether if the grammar and sense remain intact,
swap it for something more interesting or precise,
or rewrite the sentence in a way that omits the need for the crutch at all.
Pick one or two crutch words per editing pass and focus just on those.
Eventually, you’ll autocorrect the tired words into more varied, interesting prose without effort. This will of course free you up to grab onto other word crutches, so it’s a good idea to repeat the process occasionally, say once or twice a year.