A piece of bossy advice often given to creative writers is to sweep through your manuscripts before you submit them and delete certain words. “Just,” “so,” “very,” and “really” vie for the top target, but the most popular prohibition of all might be of the word “that.”
What’s wrong with “that”?
Nothing is wrong with the word “that.” It’s frequently essential to the grammar or clarity of a sentence (see below). Yet we’re often told [that] it’s “unneeded.” I sense the ghosts of Strunk and White here. “Omit needless words,” they tell us, declaring (for instance) that the sentence “His story is strange” is “more vigorous” than “His story is a strange one” and therefore better.
But is vigorous always better? Do readers demand vigor at all times, from every sentence? Creative writers especially must ask, Is this character or narration meant to be vigorous?
