The one word you should almost always delete from your writing if you want to look like a professional

Last Updated on January 15, 2019 by Nathaniel Tower

I’m not a big fan of universal writing rules. I don’t believe in deleting all adverbs from your writing. And there are plenty of writing tips I think you can safely ignore.

But there is one thing I’m pretty adamant about when helping writers improve their craft (besides not abusing apostrophes). If you want to look like a professional writer, you need to be as concise as possible. To be concise, you need to write as few words as possible. If you can delete a word without changing the meaning of the sentence, then delete it.

It’s hard to be concise. Writing less often takes longer than writing more. It’s easy to write a lot of words. It’s hard to say a lot in just a few words. At this point, you’re probably thinking I’ve said way too many words without revealing the one word you should delete from your writing. So let’s get into it.

The one word you should delete from your writing to be a better writer

 

There is one word that you should delete from your writing in order to be a better writer. Hint: I used the word in the previous sentence. Can you spot it?

It’s that.

Let’s rewrite the sentence:

“There is one word you should delete from your writing in order to be a better writer.”

Did removing that change the meaning? Nope. Did it make the sentence sound worse? Nope. In fact, it sounds much better. It’s more fluid and less clunky. That is precisely what removing that can do for your writing. Except in that sentence. And that one. Dammit, this just got confusing.

You can’t always delete the word that. It depends on how it’s being used and what its function is in the sentence. New writers often use it in everything that they are writing. Oops, I mean to say “anything they are writing.” Once again, do you see how much better it sounds without that?

When to remove that from your writing

Here’s where things get tricky. You can’t just find and replace every time that appears in your manuscript. You have understand how it’s being used. Sometimes you have to say that.

Obviously, you have to use that when you say something like “Can you hand me that red pen.” Well, I suppose you could say “Can you hand me the red pen” instead, but it’s the same number of words. But you can’t just delete that from the sentence because then the sentence just doesn’t work. “Can you hand me red pen” isn’t something an intelligent person would say.

But that is a completely different usage of the word that.

That is a pretty complicated word. It can be a conjunction, a preposition, an adjective, an adverb, or an article. That’s a lot of uses for such a small word. I don’t want to risk losing the reader at this point by launching into a big grammar lesson. Instead, I’m going to demonstrate when that can be removed.

You can usually delete that when it is serving as a conjunction. As you probably know from School House Rocks, conjunctions hook up phrases and clauses. You know, “conjunction junction, what’s your function.” Funny side note: my students could always sing that part of the song but never knew what came after it. I guess that it didn’t work that well after all.

Hey, did you see what I just did there? I used that twice in one sentence. One of them was necessary, and one of them wasn’t. Saying “I guess it didn’t work that well after all” would have had the exact same meaning. And it sounds a lot better.

That’s really all you have to do. You don’t have to ask yourself if it’s a conjunction or some other part of speech (although knowing parts of speech and how words function in a sentence is an important part of being a great writer). Just ask yourself if the word is necessary for the sentence to mean what you want it to mean.

Here are some examples:

During the five years that I’ve had my job, I’ve gotten five raises.

OR

During the fives years I’ve had my job, I’ve gotten five raises.

Sounds much better without that. Delete it.

 

My boss told me that I was getting a raise.

OR

My boss told me I was getting a raise.

Nope, that wasn’t necessary. Delete it.

 

My boss told me I was getting a raise and that I would get a new office.

OR

My boss told me I was getting a raise and I would get a new office.

Definitely not necessary, and it breaks parallel structure. Delete it. And then rewrite it as:

My boss told me I was getting a raise and a new office.

See? Fewer words, same meaning, better writing. It’s that simple.

 

Let’s look at one more.

My boss maintains that my performance is going downhill.

OR

My boss maintains my performance is going downhill.

This is a tricky one. At first glance, the second sentence seems to suggest my boss maintains my performance. At least that’s what linguist Steven Pinker would say. He calls these “garden path sentences” because the first words lead a reader down one path, then the rest of the sentence takes them down the correct path. When you read the last part of the sentence, it’s obvious the boss isn’t maintaining my performance. Still, using the word that probably does make it a little clearer, and who am I to argue with a professional linguist. Of course, I could just as easily change the word “maintains” to something else and remove that from the sentence. Such as:

My boss says my performance is going downhill.

That’s probably more clear than the first two options. But does using “says” instead of “maintains” change the meaning? That’s really up for the writer to decide.

 

Okay, we’ll do one last one since that was so tough.

My boss told me that my performance was so good that he’s giving me a raise.

Wow. That is here twice. Should we keep them both? Delete one? Delete both? Here’s what I would do:

My boss told me my performance was so good that he’s giving me a raise.

In this case, the second that seems necessary because of the usage of “so good.” I think you could make the case for getting rid of it, but I think it reads better with it. And you could just as easily argue for writing it this way:

My boss told me that my performance was so good he’s giving me a raise.

Adding that between “me” and “my” seems to clean it up a little. And you might even want to add a comma between “good” and “he’s” now. Dammit, this stuff is tricky. And it’s mostly a matter of taste (unless you’re following a strict style guide).

Remember, hard and fast rules don’t really exist for writers. We need to be able to decide how to use our words for the best result.

How to handle that in your writing

Now, as I said at the beginning of this post, I’m not a fan of any universal writing rules. I do believe you should delete that whenever you can. Your writing will be more concise and more professional.

But as you can see, this can be a pretty tricky thing. My general advice is this: you should try to delete that (or any other unnecessary word) whenever possible. If you are in doubt or you think the sentence sounds better with that, then you probably should use the word that in your sentence. Otherwise, you might lead your reader down the wrong path or cause confusion.

It takes awhile to break the habit of writing “that” when you don’t really need it. But once you do, your writing will be much improved.

So what did you think of all that? Share your thoughts in the comments. And be sure to share this post everywhere that you see fit. Or just “everywhere you see fit.” It’s up to you.