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I must have been hangry (hungry and angry) or something, but the other day it just seemed to me that the people around me were constantly using the same words to describe things. For example, one family member always uses the word ‘garbage’ to say that something is sub-par in quality. Another relative says the phrase ‘it is what it is’ ALL the time. He also inserts, “Welp” into every conversation. (Insert eye roll here) And it irritated me to no end.

I got to wondering if I do that, too, especially in my writing. So, I did some digging and found some pretty neat resources.

Grammarly.com is a good all-around program. Even the free version picks up lots of mistakes, but not necessarily repeated words. It finds more mistakes in usage and punctuation than anything. I tend to put commas in the wrong spot and it catches most of those mistakes. The paid version will be where the repetition catcher is, I’m sure.

Repetition Detector 2 takes your document and finds repetitive words. It highlights them right where they are in the text. It uses four different colors to show you close repetitions, distant repetitions, words, and phrases. The ‘distant repetitions’ feature intrigues me because you might have a few times you use the same word or phrase, but they are two pages apart. That might be worth leaving in, unless it shows up every two pages throughout the whole manuscript!

Ok. So now I know that I overuse some words or phrases. Now what? Enter Relatedwords.org. This handy little website allows you to plug in those pesky repetitions and spews out a plethora of options, both words, AND phrases. (Did you like what I did there? I feel better about my vocabulary already!) Each entry is clickable for definitions, too.

Another place where I get stuck is figuring out creative ways to describe things. Like sunsets, or sad feelings, or things that go thump in the night. Go to DescribingWords.io and put in the noun you are trying to describe and poof! A list will appear magically before your eyes. I typed in the word cat and a list longer than my arm showed up. This list was not your typical adjective list. It contained phrases, too. For example, ‘old and slightly weather-beaten’, ‘well-behaved tabby’, or ‘aloof and sufficient’ appear high on the list. It organizes the list by frequency of use. None of these words describes either of my two cats, by the way.

Last, but not least, there is Reversedictionary.org. This little gem is a lifesaver when you can’t think of the word for something. You can type in the definition and it will find matches for you. I tried ‘person in charge’ and it gave me so many names I can call my boss. (All good ones, of course!) Now I’ve got to try to work ‘supremo’ and ‘honcho’ into a conversation. Wish me luck!