Comment by powersnail | Hacker News Reader

Comment by powersnail | Hacker News Reader

I've seen such advice in many writing forums (other examples include don't use adverbs, don't use passive voice, etc.), and while it certainly pays to heed your choice of vocabulary, I'm not convinced that simply avoiding a fixed set of words or forms is good advice. Let alone replacing them with a fixed set of substitutes.

Open a few good books and essays, and see if there are adverbs, "very", passive voices, or other bad forms. These are reputable works written by careful and capable writers, and enjoyed by many readers. If they are all deemed wrong in the eyes of such advice, it's the advice that's wrong.

The valuable lesson is to actively think about the words you use, whether the text accurately convey what you mean, in the tone you desire, and is readable by your intended audience.

I'd say a good pair of thesaurus and dictionary is much better than this website. At least you got multiple candidates, an explanation of each, and get to choose the most appropriate one.

I feel like a lot of people here are taking the point of this site much too literally.

It's not saying "never ever ever ever use 'very'" or "if you want to use 'very', these are always the words you should use, no matter the context".

It's a gentle nudge to remind us that often "very" is something that we reach for because we are too lazy to come up with a more expressive word. The words the site comes up with won't be appropriate for every context where you'd otherwise just prefix a "very". That's fine. It's a starting point, not the end-all be-all. And sometimes a "very" ends up being the way to go. That's also fine.

Hacker News people being overly literal? Can't be.

Jesting aside, yes, I would echo this and a couple other comments: the point is to nudge yourself to think a bit more about diction, and spotting the word "very" is an easy trigger to do that.

Most replacements for very + something will be more precise, more evocative and just sound better. Of course, while more precise, they may be more inaccurate. You trade the shotgun of "very" for a sniper rifle, and that requires more careful aim.

If your site about word choice can't handle being interpreted based on the words it chooses, it is a bad site.

Blanket writing “avoid this” advice is almost always a list of code smells rather than errors.

(“Substitute X for Y” advice, OTOH, is usually just wrong.)

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