•October 19, 2022•
By Jim Baumann
NP Guest Writer

Sports columnist/word wizard Jim O’Donnell passed along to me a Washington Post column by Random House copy chief Benjamin Dreyer on what I’ll call poofy words. I found it most interesting.
In it Dreyer writes about his relentless search-and-destroy mission for the word “very,” which is often very unnecessary — just as my use of it in this sentence was.
He also might criticize my use of “most” to describe his column as interesting. It wasn’t the most interesting column I’ve ever read, but “interesting” by itself felt like I’d shortchanged it.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.