Some parts of speech aren't meant for heavy lifting

August 17th, 2005

Why you should go on a mission to root out adjectives

My city now has far too many free newspapers. There are three free tabloid dailies and dozens of weeklies. Many, many years ago, I edited a freebie newspaper, so I’m sympathetic to the plight they face: inexorable deadlines, insufficient capital and under-trained (although often talented) staff.

That leads to the kind of sloppiness I saw in today’s Vancouver Courier, which is usually a pretty good little newspaper. The problem occurred in the very first sentence of a story about author and senior writer for Spin, Chuck Klosterman (pictured above). The story began: “At the plucky age of 33, writer Chuck Klosterman had endured many things.”

If I was the grammar police, I might cite the journalist for using the word “At.” (He probably meant “by” – unless all the horrible things that happened to Chuck Klosterman occurred exactly when he was age 33, and no sooner.) But that’s being fussy and I believe readability is almost always more important than grammar. What bugs me here is the word “plucky”. What the heck does it mean? And how exactly can an entire age be plucky?

Well, it can’t. This is the mindless use of an adjective to try to jazz up a sentence, and it doesn’t work. If you want to improve your sentences, look at the verbs. Work them over. Pummel them. Replace them. Don’t depend on adjectives to do the heavy lifting for you.