Avoid ‘dead words,’ such as ‘good,’ ‘bad’ and ‘said’

Avoid “dead words,” such as good, bad, go, make, thing and said.

That’s what a growing army of fed-up teachers are saying (er, howling?), The Wall Street Journal reported this week in a story headlined, “‘Use More Expressive Words!‘ Teachers Bark, Beseech, Implore. To encourage lively writing, instructors put certain words to rest; no more ‘fun.'”

The push to get texting-addicted youngsters to expand their vocabularies is spearheaded by educators who are bleary from grading essays littered with awesome, sweet and rad. The anti-“dead words” movement even suggests lessons for communicators and other wordsmiths, though perhaps not those the educators are pushing.

The campaign faces resistance from writers and teachers who deride the push for students to grab a thesaurus and dig up florid alternatives to commonplace words that are not dead by any linguistic definition.

Tombstones for words