Blogging from #AtoZChallenge - Up/down and Undefeated

A little over four years ago, I started my first ms. I'd never taken a writing class - I have a degree in Physics and a masters in engineering. So I had a LOT to learn. My husband taught me about passive voice as he shook his head reading the first draft. Then I learned how much education is available online.

One of the first sites I found pointed out the uselessness of words like up, down, and over when they don't add information. It made sense, I took it to heart, and these words have become one of my pet peeves. Clearly I was proud of learning something!


Examples:
She dropped down to the ground. There's really no other way to drop - she dropped to the ground. Doesn't that sound better?

The raven flew up into the sky. The raven flew into the sky. (I bet you could give more colorful information and get rid of "into the sky," as well.)

He reached over to the window. He reached to the window (or maybe stretched or leaned for more visual.)

The important thing to remember when polishing is to make sure every word is necessary. If the sentence makes sense without the word, chances are it's cleaner and better without it as well. Another often useless word is "that."

Do you have a pet peeve for words used incorrectly or uselessly? Drop me a comment below and leave a link back to your blog and I'll be sure to visit and comment.

We bought Undefeated with high hopes. He's a 6yo arab gelding of unknown breeding. He was nervous, but nicely conformed, and we thought he'd make a wonderful endurance horse. He went through a series of names. I don't remember what he came to us with, something starting with H. We tried Hancock, the Will Smith super(anti)hero, but that was a mouthful.

When he did his first endurance ride on an army base we named him HMV for Humvee for a while. He was built like a tank and seemed like he could go forever. So we named him Undefeated formally, but still called him HMV most of the time. Then he decided, yeah, he could go forever, but not at the speeds we like. He became a perfect climb around mountains at a walk or slow trot type horse and his new owner loves him like crazy.