A devil’s bargain in word processing is the quick-find option. David Lodge foresaw this curse in Small World, when his character Frobisher found, through an old-tyme computer, his unwitting penchant for the world “grease” – greasy, grease-stained, etc. He had used grease-related words over and over again in past writings. And this knowledge crippled him. When he tried to write after that, whenever he needed an adjective, he couldn’t think of anything else. It was all grease. So he stopped writing.
I had a similar experience with a plague of “evens.” Once I noticed my predilection for the word “even,” I started to see it everywhere. Three times in one paragraph. Twice in one sentence. So much emphasis.
Now I am keenly, painfully aware of every use of the word “even” … even words that look like it – like “every,” which I have used twice in this paragraph. What is it about that word that makes it so infectious? Have I always been so excessive in my use of “even,” as far back as Adam and Even?
