My Three Least Favorite Words in the English Language 

Any writer who has ever sent out manuscripts to publishers for possible publication has probably received a superficial form rejection letter. More often than not, the rejection letter will say something like this:

“Thank you for sending us your story, but UNFORTUNATELY it doesn’t fit our editorial needs at this time.”  

Why UNFORTUNATELY? Is UNFORTUNATELY supposed to make me feel better that my work is being rejected? One person (very possibly a person 22 years of age who just doesn’t “get” my story) has decided my work isn’t worthy of publication. Fortune has nothing to do with it. These “gate keepers” work for literary magazines and are supposed to be writers themselves, for heaven’s sake! They are judging my work, and they can’t think of anything more fitting to say than UNFORTUNATELY? Isn’t it a writers’ job to avoid being trite and lazy? A little originality couldn’t hurt here. UNFORTUNATELY is a junky word that should be avoided in speaking or writing, but especially in writing. Just because UNFORTUNATELY is a long, five-syllable word doesn’t mean people will think you’re smart if you use it.

Another overused word that I truly despise is HOPEFULLY. When you are around anybody doing any talking, you can’t go for more than a few minutes without hearing something like this:

“HOPEFULLY I will get sick after lunch so I can go home for the rest of the day.” 

This is a grammatically incorrect sentence! Didn’t anybody sit through eighth-grade English? HOPEFULLY is an adverb. To be used correctly, it must have a verb to go with it, as in:

“We waited HOPEFULLY for good news from the front.”  

And that brings us to the Queen Mother of all meaningless, overused, cringe-inducing words! If somebody could count up the number of times that BASICALLY is used in a year, it would be in the tens of millions. BASICALLY as a word doesn’t mean anything. What exactly does it mean, anyway? There isn’t any sentence that contains BASICALLY that wouldn’t be a better sentence without it.

“The hurricane will BASICALLY hit landfall around midnight.”  

All right, what does BASICALLY add to that sentence? You are saying the same thing with fewer words and not making anybody cringe if you just say:

“The hurricane will hit landfall around midnight.”  

There are at least two news reporters on Fox News who can barely speak a sentence without throwing in BASICALLY. If they don’t use BASICALLY in the first sentence or two, they are sure to use it in the first thirty seconds of their report. That’s when they lose me. That’s when I reach for the remote to channel over to the comforting and unreal world of Turner Classic Movies. Isn’t that the Wavishing Kay Fwancis?

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp