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If only there WERE forbidden words, how easy writing would be! The truth is that nothing is black and white in writing. People love certainty, so you will often hear writing rules quoted - usually by people who should know better. But there are no hard and fast rules, only guidelines - and there are lots of exceptions, in every case.

The words that are often tagged as "forbidden" are those which are most often over-used, especially by new writers. These include:

THAT. Do a search for "that" in a piece of your work. Each time you find one, try deleting it. Read the sentence now. Was "that" really necessary? Sometimes, you'll have to put it back: but often, you'll find the sentence reads just as well without it.

AND. A perfectly good word, but if you're using it to make long, boring sentences, it becomes bad. New writers often think long sentences sound grander, so they use "and" to join two phrases which would sound much better as two separate sentences. Once again, doing a search and removing the word will help you see whether you're guilty of this one. Another bad usage is to connect two simultaneous actions. For instance, "He buttoned his shirt and slipped his feet into his shoes" would sound much better as "Buttoning his shirt, he slipped his feet into his shoes".

THEN. Another word that can often be removed - again, try it and see.

SUDDENLY. This word is often used when something exciting or unexpected happens. It's fine to use it once or twice - but if you're writing a thriller, there are going to be lots of "Suddenly" events, and it's going to get repetitive! It's much better to convey the sudden nature of the events in your description.

ANY WORD THAT'S OVER-USED. We all have favourite words that we use all the time, both in writing and in speech. We may not be conscious of them, but they will start to irritate your readers. If you have a facility on your computer to check the frequency of words, use it - you may be astonished to find you have 561 instances of some word you hadn't even noticed.

One important exception to the "do not overuse" rule is the word SAID. Contrary to popular belief, you can't overuse the word "said". Writers used to jump through hoops to think of alternatives, but these days we know that the word "said" is invisible to the reader, so there's no need to subsitute for it. In fact, using obscure verbs to take its place will only distract your reader more. Having said that, there are better ways to write your dialogue than just using tags.

There are many more TYPES of words (rather than specific words) that are on the "forbidden" list - adverbs, "-ing" words, adverbs, passive voice, etc. These are covered in other articles on Helium, so I won't duplicate them here.

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