Don’t Do Dat – or That

Today’s tip on Polishing Your Message is . . . Don’t Do That.

Do What?

Overuse the word that.

The overuse of  that is one of my pet peeves when grading college essays. (Did you hear me students?) And as expected, many editors feel the same way. So don’t be surprised when you read this in more than one place. Fellow A3 writer Lori Hatcher also shares the same advice in a recent blog about “How To Drive Editors Crazy – Part 2.”

Overuse of the word has become acclimated in our speech; thus, we easily overlook it when we write it. Most of the time that used in an essay, article, or blog can easily be removed without harm to the sentence or the message.  Simply read the sentence without it and see if it changes the meaning. If not, omit it. When used incorrectly, the word that is as useful as those empty modifiers we also try to avoid like very, really, totally, truly, etc.

Now I am not saying to remove the word that every time. Many sentences will need the word to show the reader important information will soon follow. Most of the time our ear will tell us if that is needed or not. The goal for this post is to suggest you be more aware when polishing your drafts and looking for unnecessary words which can be omitted.

If you would like to read a more thorough source on when to leave that in and when to leave that out, I’ll share with you Grammar Girl’s discussion for your reading pleasure. She has much more to say on the topic. You will be amazed how much there is to think about when considering that little four letter word.

So ,add that to your proofreading checklist, and have fun polishing your message.

(Photo credits belong to Cat Branchman and Leonard Matthews)