using the word "suddenly"

[Ursa major]

How do you highlight or colour using find/replace? (Does it matter that I'm still using Word 2003?)

I didn't try to do this before using Word XP (which I purchased in 2002), but I expect it was available on even earlier versions.

Bearing in mind that I'm on a machine whose version of Word is 2013.... In Replace, click on "More >>". At the bottom left, click on Format, which gives you a list of options. 'Highlight' should be the last of these, under 'Style...'. Note that you can use this function to not only set highlights but also to find them.

 

[HareBrain]

Golly, there's a whole wonderland of options there! I've just realised I use Word 2003 like it was Wordperfect 1975.

 

[Dennis E. Taylor]

You can use all these hidden options to search for particular formatting, such as underlined, you can replace all colored text with "auto" color, etc. It opened up a whole world when I discovered those options.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I've just realised I use Word 2003 like it was Wordperfect 1975.

Maybe much later, Wordstar predated Wordperfect. At least I thought so, but it seems that they both arrived about 1979
But I know what you mean.
Actually I thought it arrived 1982 or 1983, but I was wrong. Wordstar was on CP/M, Wordperfect on DOS, never on CP/M and Wordstar was on DOS a same year as Wordperfect, but much more successful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordperfect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar
I also used MS Word for DOS and I have Word 2.0a, for Windows still, (Word 1.0 was Mac only!)

 

[Ursa major]

Golly, there's a whole wonderland of options there!

I use lots of character** styles, so that I can search for word usage for different PoV characters and in their -- and other characters' -- dialogue.


** - You can have different character styles all on top of a paragraph's own (paragraph) style. In fact, you can have styles that never appear in the text itself, but are used only as underlying templates for styles that do appear there.

 

[Susan Boulton]

I would try not to use it, but if you can't find another way of constructing the sentence, then use it. But if you try you always find another way, least I have found it so and it often is for the better.

 

[J D Foster]

I have a list of words I use too much and suddenly is a major one for me. "Kinda's" and "though" turn up way too much for me too.

I find suddenly really hard to replace, I usually end up rewording the whole sentence to make them go away. I once had 10 suddenly's in one 30k short story, I felt so embarrassed and ashamed when I realised it. Good job no one but me has seen the story yet.

I wonder how many other words I use too often

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Under The Stone of Destiny 54,654 Words (inc revision list, title and chapter headings)

18 Suddenly

(see here for two macros that you can create and save in Normal for Word97, 2000, XP, 2002 & 2003 at least)

Entire list of words with more than 200 occurrences

1160 said

817 i

734 you

694 it

675 was

608 in

586 kevlin

566 he

497 megra

452 they

429 she

385 we

348 have

339 but

334 as

325 not

319 alice

310 at

300 had

300 ghiloric

291 on

284 with

279 or

277 her

258 no

242 i’m

235 it’s

233 barens

225 anrhi

210 so

 

[J D Foster]

On pointing the spotlight at it, however, it became clear -- quite suddenly, in fact -- that in most cases it was simply superfluous, needing no more than its deletion, with no change to the associated verb required.

Thank you for this. I just opened up one of my stories and went through with Ctrl F to find all my suddenly's and I just tried deleting them. You are 100% right in the vast majority of cases it makes no difference to the sentence. I am so thankful and pleased to have read that bit of advise!

(see here for two macros that you can create and save in Normal for Word97, 2000, XP, 2002 & 2003 at least)

Ray, thanks for that link to the Macro, I just ran it on the story I'm working on and found that I also use the words "interrupt" and "clearly" way too often.

That is a really useful tool, I will be running it for all my stories from now onwards.

 

[Gonk the Insane]

I saw this yesterday and on a whim decided to search a manuscript I wrote a couple of years back. I figured there'd be a suddenly or two in there...

I found 52 (aaaargh!) in 140,000 words, with an average of 1 per 2,600 words - 1 per chapter, basically. I even found 6 in a single chapter (can anyone beat that record?). I like to think that if my English teacher ever found out she would throw a dictionary at my head and say something pithy like "Suddenly that hurts, doesn't it?", probably followed by an admonishment to pay more attention in class...

 

[J D Foster]

I found 52 (aaaargh!) in 140,000 words, with an average of 1 per 2,600 words - 1 per chapter, basically. I even found 6 in a single chapter (can anyone beat that record?). .

Thank you so much for sharing, it makes me feel better to know that other people struggle with this.

I've just recently released that I am a serial word repeater, its been really getting me down, so it's nice to hear other people are struggling with some words too!

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

I am a serial phrase repeater. The hairs stand up on my characters' necks quite a lot; their breath catches in their throats and cynical eyebrows are raised far too frequently for good writing.

 

[J D Foster]

I am a serial phrase repeater. The hairs stand up on my characters' necks quite a lot; their breath catches in their throats and cynical eyebrows are raised far too frequently for good writing.

Oh yeah, I do that too. I find it slightly easier to edit repeated sentences than words.

I'm not sure its possible to keep track of sentence repeats as you type.

I'm trying to think about my danger words as I type now though... Its so hard.

I'd love to see the repeated words statistics on a Novel from someone like Stephen King. It would be great to have that as a bench mark. Oh Mr King doesn't have 500 instances of the word like... Like I do, maybe I need to cut a few of mine. You know that kind of thing.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

There are sites like this https://prowritingaid.com/ that allow you to paste excerpts of your work in and they give you a run-down of common issues, including repeated words and clichéd phrases (I have a lot of those!). The free version limits the number of words you can have analysed, but it is a good way of getting a snapshot from a bit of your novel, to give you an idea of your bad habits. I used it a couple of times, but found the free version a little unwieldy - and I'm too tight-fisted to pay for the full version!

I just thought that if you could get an electronic copy of some SK's work, you could plug it in here and do a comparison with your own.

 

[J D Foster]

Yeah, I've just bought Smart Edit, which is a massive help identifying where I repeat.

Its having a benchmark... I wonder if it is possible to get a copy of the text of a well established professional writer for the purpose of plumbing it into Smart Edit..

That's a great idea Kerry, I'm going to look into it. I guess there maybe some copywrite issues getting my hands on someone's text even if it is for genuine purposes of improving as a writer

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

You're right, I'm sure, but you could perhaps plug in a small sample without breaching copyright, then take a percentage based on total word count.

 

[J Riff]

Suddenly tends to not be so bad if it isn't used to start a sentence.

 

[J D Foster]

So I have found a copy of the text to Frankenstein online and put it into Smart Edit the results are very interesting.

Not sure what people think of Frank, it wasn't one of my favorites when I read it. Better than Jekyll but not a patch on Dracula in my opinion.

At any rate it is a classic, and it uses the word suddenly 20 times, in a 70k story.

There are 85 "only" which cheered me up.

It is rife with repeated phrases in some cases 20+ times.

hundreds of "when's" "more's" "could's" and "should's."

Dialog tags is interesting too, only 78 said's

In the suspect punctuation list there are too many exclamation, marks for me to be bothered to count.

All this makes me feel a lot better about my own repeated words, and phrases etc. Now if I could write a story as 10th as popular as Frank, then I'd be a happy bunny indeed.

 

[Ursa major]

There's no problem with having lots of coulds and shoulds, although one wouldn't want them to be clustered together too much, thereby drawing undue attention to themselves.

 

[hardsciencefanagain]

the word suddenly shouldn't be sprung upon the unaware reader