{"id":727,"date":"2011-05-25T09:00:41","date_gmt":"2011-05-25T14:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/?p=727"},"modified":"2011-05-24T20:54:54","modified_gmt":"2011-05-25T01:54:54","slug":"i-was-writing-a-post-about-was","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/25\/i-was-writing-a-post-about-was\/","title":{"rendered":"I was writing a post about was"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/heleninwales.livejournal.com\/686311.html\">Helen<\/a> posted a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/emmadarwin.typepad.com\/thisitchofwriting\/2011\/05\/have-you-heard-the-one-about-was.html\">an article about why avoiding &#8220;was&#8221; isn&#8217;t always the best idea<\/a>. I agree that it isn&#8217;t &#8211; &#8220;to be&#8221; in all its forms is kinda an important verb in our language &#8211; but I have to say I often do a search to try to get rid of it.<\/p>\n<p>This helps me avoid two problems:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I have a tendency to use the &#8220;She was standing by the door&#8221; pattern a lot, and it gets way too repetitive. And sing-songy. And repetitive.<\/li>\n<li>The boring &#8220;she was sad&#8221;s, &#8220;the ship was red&#8221;, the blah was blah. I still have to work hard to remember to put description (both physical and emotional) in, and phrases like that are a good clue that I&#8217;m being lazy. Sometimes I do want to use them, but I always want to think about it first.\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That said, &#8220;was&#8221; is only #6 on my list of overused words that I should search for and consider killing. (&#8220;Looked&#8221; and &#8220;glanced&#8221; are at the top.)<\/p>\n<p>Do you guys try to avoid &#8220;was&#8221;?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Helen posted a link to an article about why avoiding &#8220;was&#8221; isn&#8217;t always the best idea. I agree that it isn&#8217;t &#8211; &#8220;to be&#8221; in all its forms is kinda an important verb in our language &#8211; but I have &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/25\/i-was-writing-a-post-about-was\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}