That writing benefits from the effective use of words should be obvious. Without good word choice, your efforts at grammar, punctuation and rhetoric will be for naught, or rather squandered.

Effective usage means avoiding words that are lazy, weak, awkward, overused, imprecise, boring, abused, imprecise, redundant, or which merely serve as filler. Identifying and fixing such language serves as a central challenge to each of us in our writing.

Because the goals of our writing are nearly as diverse as ourselves, there is no single set of rules guiding usage. What stands for formal writing will fail for informal. What’s needed for dialogue won’t jibe with that needed for narrative. The demands placed on the technical writer aren’t wholly shared by other writers of non-fiction.

Works of prose evolve. We expect our first drafts to be saddled with poor usage, full of weak and repetitive language to be culled on later rewrites. With enough polishing a work can emerge for which we can be proud.

Writers can benefit from tools which can help them along that path. wordy aspires to be such a tool.

Existing proofreading software can scan your text for potential problems in grammar and usage and provide comprehensive feedback. However, some services like ‘After the Deadline’ require transmission of your work to a server for checking. Others require installation and configuration of a complex software package, where integration with Vim may prove difficult or infeasible.

In contrast, wordy stands as a lightweight alternative to these comprehensive tools, focusing narrowly on identifying potential problems in word usage. Because it’s primitive by comparison, it’s best used in concert with books and other resources on good usage in writing.

Requirements

May require a recent version of Vim.

Installation

Best installed using Pathogen, Vundle, Neobundle, or your favorite Vim package manager.

Configuration

You’ll typically use this plugin on-demand. It does not require any special configuration, unless you want to map its commands to keys. More on that below.

Important note: on the first use of each of the plugin’s dictionaries, a spell file will be built. This produces a message that resembles:

Reading word file /Users/reede/.vim/bundle/vim-wordy/data/en/cred.dic ...
Compressing word tree...
Compressed 618 of 1738 nodes; 1120 (64%) remaining
Writing spell file /Users/reede/.vim/bundle/vim-wordy/spell/cred.en.utf-8.spl ...
Done!
Estimated runtime memory use: 5600 bytes
Press ENTER or type command to continue

As instructed, press the enter key and it will disturb you no longer, at least until it needs to build again.

Commands

You can switch wordy on and off. You’ll use the commands described below to enable it. To disable and restore your previous spell environment, enter the command:

:NoWordy

Usage Dictionaries

wordy can’t read your mind. Even if it could it couldn’t understand your intent. In fact wordy is pretty dumb, as it will flag words and phrases that may fit your goals perfectly well. In such a case you can ignore wordy’s protestations.

wordy errs on the side of identifying potential problems. For example, if it highlights ‘moreover’, a word for which there may be no good usage, you should consider a rewrite to eliminate it. But if it highlights ‘therefore’ in a sentence, you may consider it worthy and elect to keep it, wordy be damned.

wordy has a dozen dictionaries at the ready to attempt to shoot down your prose.

Weak and lazy words

:LazyWordy

Lazy and weak words are common in first drafts.

We sabotage ourselves though weak language. We defeat our goal of effective writing by kicking the legs out from beneath our verbs and tearing at the foundations of our nouns.

Words that water down the points we are trying to drive home.

“I got up and went to work.” => “I awoke and drove to work.”

We diminish the weight of our ideas by adding modifiers.

“The regiment was perhaps a hundred strong, and took the hill.”

“The regiment took the hill, despite fewer than a hundred soldiers remaining in its ranks.”

Text can also be weakened through overuse

“He actually drove to work in the blizzard.” => “He drove to work in spite of the blizzard.”

Use in rare occasions, effectively. Consult the books.

Words can be fillers and play no active role, such as needless use of ‘that’:

“A dog that was missing an eye followed us.” => “A dog missing an eye followed us.”

The use of ‘the’ can weaken, such as in this sentence. Better: start with “Using ‘the’”.

You can use the word ‘have’ in situations where you can be more direct: “Can I have the ice cream?” => “I want ice cream.”

Wordiness can be weak: “Joe has the ability to eat beef.” => “Joe can eat beef.”

Using forms of ‘to be’ when action verbs can be used. Covered as a separate target.

Redundant phrases

:RedundantWordy

Did you ever receive an ‘advance warning’ when a mere warning would do? Why plan when you can ‘plan ahead’? Why need a thought to ‘occur to me’ when the thought can merely ‘occur’?

But redundancies may not actually be redundant: ‘invited guests’ may not be redundant if some of the guests have crashed your event. Or dialect differences can erase redundancies, as the British will ‘protest against’ where Americans may simply ‘protest’.

To reveal [common redundancies][1] from which you can scrub from your prose, enter this command:

WordyPuffery

TODO describe puffery

“The guru embodies authenticity; his disruptive ideas on self-actualization reflect his dynamic and transformative personality.”

Instead of using these words, instead provide a graphic example.

“The Empire State Building is enormously tall.” => “My ears popped several times during the X minute elevator ride to the observation deck.”

WordyCred

“Along with a growing body of evidence, because common sense insists that my opponent’s policies threaten and untrustworthy.”

Rather than provide the reasoning and evidence, we’ll unconsciously sneak in weasel words to shore up a weak facade.

Similarly, we’ll skip reasoning and evidence and instead sneak in weasel words to cast fear, uncertainty and doubt upon points we seek to tear down.

WordyToBe

If you’re not writing in the third person, you’ll want to ensure that you’re not overusing.

"You were there!" by Walter Cronkite

“‘Was’ is a passive, lazy bum that hangs around your writing eating all the snacks and drinking all the beer.” via Claire Grasse

Combos

TODO figure out which combos are best

TODO show how you can define your own combo

What this plugin will miss

Adverbs and adjectives.

Future development

wordy is a work in progress. If you’ve spotted a problem or have an idea on improving this plugin, please post it to the github project issue page. Contributions are welcome.

README.markdown Unescape Escape

vim-wordy

Features of this plugin