iA Writer recently had an update where they allowed for custom style check filters in addition to the cliches, fillers and redundancies filters the app possessed.
This coincided with me reading Dreyer’s English. In the opening chapter Dreyer gives a list of words to stop using for a week.
One of which—so—is one that I knew I used too much.
It was straight forward to add in the words to iA Writer’s pattern list—the only catch being that since I wanted words, and not letter combinations, I had to add spaces before and after.
Otherwise, “so” would mark “personal” since it contained “so”.
Has it helped? That’s to be decided. The intent is not to exclude these words from my prose, poetry, or blog ramblings, but to be more conscious of the construction of those writings.
So when I drop a “so”, it feels fluid, not repetitive.
