Do You Overuse 'Of'?

Today's topic is nixing the horrid "of."

How to Use the Word 'Of'

Almost everyone has a few bad writing habits. They're often the kind of thing experts or even your friends can point to and say, "Yup, I know who wrote that.  She always writes things that way." One of my bad habits is that I tend to overuse the word "of." A while ago, I was working on a document, and as I read back through it, I noticed there must have been 20 instances of the word "of." Ugh!

Bad Uses of 'Of'

"Of" is a preposition, and although it's not an inherently evil word, overusing it can make your writing sound passive and fussy. Here's an example of a bad sentence:

BAD SENTENCE: She is the wife of George.

That's just horrible. It makes me cringe just to say it. It makes me think of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale," in which the handmaids have names like "Offred" to indicate that they belonged to Fred. But I digress.

Here's a better way to say the same thing:

BETTER SENTENCE: She's George's wife.

See? You don't need the "of." The sentence sounds much more straightforward without it. She is George's wife.

I'm hopeful that none of you would actually write, "She's the wife of George," or any other such strained sentence, but more subtle unnecessary "of"s can slip into your writing if you aren't careful. Here's a more reasonable example: Reporting on some bizarre science experiment, you might write, "The length of the remaining string can be used to calculate how far the snail has moved."

There's nothing really wrong with that sentence, except that it leaves you wondering how to attach string to a snail, but you'd probably get to that later in your write-up.

Nevertheless, you could tighten up the sentence by rewriting it to say, "The remaining string length can be used to calculate how far the snail has moved." See? Compare "The length of the remaining string," with "The remaining string length?" The second version, without the "of," sounds more direct.

And here's a final example how the word "of" can be a sign that your writing is bloated and could be more direct.

First, the bad sentence:

You can tell that the readers are passionate about flocked Christmas trees by ...

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