A weak word doesn’t add meaning. It sits in a sentence taking up space, softening a claim that would land harder without it, or standing in for a more specific word the sentence needed. Cut them and the sentence underneath does more with less.

The List

Intensifiers that don’t intensify: very, really, quite, so, extremely, incredibly, totally, completely, absolutely.

Hedges: somewhat, rather, fairly, kind of, sort of, a bit, a little, seemingly.

Filler verbs and qualifiers: just, basically, literally, simply, essentially, honestly.

Vague nouns: thing, stuff, something, someone, somewhere, a lot.

Weak verbs propped up by adverbs or qualifiers: started to, began to, seemed to, tried to, managed to, was able to.

Why They Dilute a Sentence

Two different failure modes, depending on the word.

Intensifiers and hedges cancel each other out. Very cold isn’t meaningfully colder than cold. The intensifier sits in front of a word that either carries the weight on its own or it doesn’t, adding no force of its own. If the underlying word isn’t strong enough, adding very in front of it doesn’t fix that, it just draws attention to the gap.

Filler words and vague nouns replace precision with padding. He picked up the thing on the table tells the reader nothing. He picked up the letter does the same job in fewer words and gives the reader something specific to picture.

Weak verb constructions delay the actual verb. She started to cry takes longer to read than she cried and adds a beat of hesitation the sentence probably didn’t intend. Unless the starting and stopping is the actual point, the direct verb does more.

Before: She was really quite tired, and just wanted to sit down for a bit. After: She was exhausted and wanted to sit down.

Before: There was a lot of stuff on the table, some papers and other things. After: Papers covered the table.

Neither rewrite is dramatically different in length. Both are more specific, and specificity is what separates flat prose from prose that lands.

When to Keep Them

A weak word is wrong specifically when it’s doing nothing, not as a category.

Dialogue. People talk like this. “I’m, like, really not sure,” said in dialogue, is doing characterisation work a cleaner version wouldn’t do. Don’t apply this list to speech the way you’d apply it to narration.

Voice. If your narrator’s voice is chatty, informal, or rambling on purpose, a few weak words are part of that voice, not a mistake to fix. The test is the same one that applies everywhere in a line edit: is this word doing something, or is it just there.

Genuine hedging. Somewhat reluctant and reluctant aren’t quite the same claim. If the hedge is carrying real information, keep it.

How to Cut Them

Search each word from the list above across a chapter, one at a time. It’s slower than it sounds, some of these words appear dozens of times in a single chapter, but the pattern becomes obvious fast: certain words cluster around certain kinds of scenes, the ones that needed more specificity in the first place.

Writing Desk tip: The AI Editor’s line edit lens surfaces weak words as part of its chapter feedback alongside filter words and passive constructions, so the search happens automatically rather than word by word. You still decide what stays.