Vermont Bar Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2 Fall 2014, Vol. 40, No. 3 | Page 38

Sweat the Small Stuff

simply deleting the word. Better yet, use
the opportunity to choose a more forceful and dynamic word. “Very old” becomes
“ancient.” “Very hot” becomes “scalding.”
Challenge yourself to capture your reader’s
attention through word choice. It is fun!
Avoiding “clearly” and “very” are two
examples of the general recommendation to avoid excessive modifiers. Hunt for
needless adjectives and adverbs and eliminate them. Prefer the unadorned noun or
verb to excessive modifiers. Just Writing, a
leading legal writing manual, warns against
“adverb clutter.” Here is an example of adverb clutter and the manual’s revision.
Basically H