Removing Disease Words

1-8. illustrate "be" verbs and cause many sentence-level errors.
9-13. People use these as an easy fall back from not using the first eight. Also, they sound unprofessional, and one aim of an education is professionalism. In this class, professionalism means helping you form a bilingualism of both your everyday-speak and building up/improving your professional language. It’s always possible to find better verbs that can replace these.
14-17. create an ambiguity (vague references) that never should occur in a paper.
18-21. These are 2nd POV pronouns that can come across as accusatory or "finger-pointy" when used in academic language. They also sound unprofessional and should be replaced with more neutral 3rd POV pro/nouns such as many, one, some, people, individuals, others, and more specific nouns for groups.
22-25. Become(s)/became is a tricky word that should be avoided. The correct use for "become(s)" has something "morph or grow into something else," such as a boy becoming (morphing into) a man or a caterpillar becoming (morphing into) a butterfly. See the explanation below for why you're probably using "becomes" incorrectly.

List of disease words to avoid in ENC1102 assignments.

Ways to Remove Disease Words

*Also be sure to check out the Useful Downloads section below for a PDF you can save to review when needed.

Remove Contractions

These often hide disease: isn't, they're, and she's, etc. (is not, they are, she is, etc.)

Find the Subject

Identify what the subject does, offers, illustrates, or describes, not what the subject "is" or "exists as." (What does it do?)
- Every day is a different challenge.
- Different challenges confront us every day.
- Different challenges enter our lives daily.

Begin the sentence with that subject, not a verb, adverb, or preposition.

This creates a more active sentence structure, which is often preferred in professional, academic writing (passive to active structure).
- Verb Ex.: Allowing students to do X, this opportunity...
- Adverb Ex.: Deliberately offering opportunities to do X, students...
- Preposition Ex.: In offering students to do X, this opportunity...
- Active Structure Ex.: This opportunity allows students to do X.

Keyword Search

In the Word software (not online version), use CTRL+F to open the find/search box and keyword search each diseased word for removal.

Find Synonyms

Use this online thesaurus to find replacement verbs that best suit what you’re trying to say.
- Remember! Different synonyms have different meanings.
- Don’t just slap a fancy looking word in to replace anything because you want the paper to look sophisticated. Be purposeful in your selections.