Who originated this famous quote?
"Substitute 'damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."
Despite the lore, it's probably not Mark Twain.
Image: Mark Twain
According to the link referenced above, the Pittsburg Press included this comment: "Will Allen White advises the use of 'damn' in place of 'very.' Very fine in some cases, but we’ll be very if it always goes."
I share this not only as an example of verbal tics to cut from our writing but also as a cautionary tale of blindly making alterations without careful consideration of context.
An extreme example comes from a 1990 edition of the Fresno (California) Bee, which printed the following retraction:
"An item in Thursday's Nation Digest about the Massachusetts budget crisis made reference to new taxes that will help put Massachusetts 'back in the African-American.' The item should have said 'back in the black.'"
The first year I taught school, one of my students turned in a paper in which every letter "i" was capitalized, no matter where it appeared, even if it was in the middle of a word.
I spoke with him about it and thought we had an understanding. However, his next paper contained all "i" occurrences in lowercase, even when they served as the pronoun or at the beginning of a sentence.
Gentle reader, what's the lesson here?